Locke (Cinema Screening)

(Spoilers)

Tom Hardy is a boss. I have grown to love him for his roles in films such as Inception, Warrior and The Dark Knight Rises to name a few.  Once I heard about this movie I knew for sure that I would be getting to the cinema to see it, Locke does well before it even begins because due to the trailer not giving much away I really wasn’t aware of the storyline beforehand which was so refreshing as this rarely happens these days!

I had my expectations of what I thought that Locke would be, I had tried to work a few things out from the trailer about the plot but as per usual I got it all wrong! Locke is actually a really simple idea, and it’s plot is one of a dramatic style not on as much of a large scale as I was expecting but on a much more personal level.  When I heard Hardy’s character Locke talking about concrete in clips I assumed there would have been some kind of murder/cover-up on the cards but it was far from that, simply being one man’s mistake and how he deals with it.  There was no one chasing Locke in the car, he doesn’t crash etc it really just is the story of a man trying to make things right and dealing with the fallout of his actions and strangely it is actually really enthralling.  It didn’t need to feature those elements that I mentioned above typical of action movies, it didn’t have to be a nail biting thriller either as it worked just the way it was!

Apart from around 30 seconds at the start of the movie Locke is shot completely in a car. I knew this could potentially be an issue but before watching it I reassured myself that it wouldn’t be.  After all I really enjoyed the movie Buried, in which Ryan Reynolds is confined to a coffin underground for the entire movie.  This was the case with Locke also, not for one minute was I ever bored or wanting a change in setting, I was just so interested in who he was going to speak to next that it really didn’t bother me that he just sat in a car for the whole film.  So in terms of this aspect of the film, it can be taken as a clear success as it worked well and threw up no problems.  Tom Hardy was fantastic as usual and it was pretty cool to see how he portrayed Locke’s responses to different people, from his son to his boss, his work college to his wife etc, I really enjoyed watching these conversations unfold.  As radio 1 critique Rhianna Dhillon said in her review of Locke it is fun to try and work out the actors who voice those that Locke has conversations with.  It was great to see Olivia Coleman starring and I convinced myself that it was Chris O’Dowd who was voicing Donal but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was old Moriarty himself, Andrew Scott.

Overall Locke wasn’t what I was expecting and it is a strange idea for a film, on paper I don’t think I would have given it the time of day.  However Locke does work and it is a good movie, what has been created here should be praised for how well all the elements come together to produce a captivating story that keeps you wanting to know more and more. It was a pleasure to watch the events unfold.

BIGGEST FLAW – The only flaws would be based on the nature of the film, so in fairness it doesn’t really have any apart from those.

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT – Hardy’s performance as Locke

Rating – 8.5/10