Throughout the UK, indie filmmakers must be kicking themselves after watching the superlative Locke and thinking ‘damn – why didn’t I make that’.
On the eve of pouring the foundations for Europe’s largest construction site, Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), happily married and professionally at the top of his game, feels compelled to do the decent thing. Deserting both family and job, Ivan drives through the night to be present at the birth of his child, a result of his only ever one-night stand.
A lean, emotionally powerful existential one-hander shot in only eight days almost entirely inside Ivan’s car, this seemingly simple film is anything but. Emotionally gripping, anchored by a tremendously compelling performance by Hardy in which we never see a single other face, the physical constraints of this minimalist production open a window onto a vast darkly complex portrait of family life, ambition, morality and above all humanity.
Heartbreaking and completely immersive, this is destined to be a low-budget landmark from the writer of Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things.