One Man Act

Here’s a novel idea: film as short story. This is the feeling I got seeing Locke, a movie written and directed by British auteur Steven Knight, more known for his very good screenplays –Eastern Promises, Amazing Grace- than his directing – Redemption. The whole movie takes place in a BMW, at night, on a freeway in England, and the only character we ever see on screen is Ivan Locke, the driver; all others are presented to us via his car phone.

The idea is different, for film, but I can say with certainty that if the hour and twenty minutes of this film do not drag it is a credit to the man that plays Ivan Locke in the movie: British actor Tom Hardy. With a screenplay like this there is not much a director can do in terms of making a very visual movie, for how many shots of a car on a freeway at night can you take, after all, before you've shown all there is to show? And because there is a need to get the dialogue between Locke and the other characters in the film as clear as possible, given that he is talking to them over a car phone, there’s not much to be done in terms of score either. What’s left is the acting and Tom Hardy proves his worth.

Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises and Inception

American film goers are probably more familiar with Hardy from the Christopher Nolan films he has acted in. He played Eames in Inception, not quite a main role, but one that got him noticed, but more importantly to his career, he played a quite central role in Nolan’s The Dark Night Rises, that of the masked villain Bane. Still, he was behind a mask, so he may still not be a familiar face to American moviegoers. Personally, I was more impressed with his acting in Warrior, as Nick Nolte’s fighter son, and even in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, although he is not as well remembered for those films. Altogether, however, they reveal that this actor is capable of tremendous range. He is nothing like any of these other characters in Locke. He’s also not like himself, since he is only 37 yet he plays a man who seems so much older, made so by the weight of the responsibilities he carries with such grace.

Tom Hardy in Warrior and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The story is that of a man who wants to be as unlike his father as he can possibly be, shaped into “goodness” by his suffering as a child and haunted by this past. The ghost of his father is the silent passenger in the backseat. What a solid performance we get! It is exciting that there is an actor that can make time in a car pass quickly as we are immersed in the different facets of Ivan Locke’s life.

But the movie feels like a short story and not a novel. This most definitely could be because we are in a car with this man for the duration of the film and can only imagine the other people in his life, those we get to know only through their voices. It could also be because this is just a snapshot of Ivan Locke’s life, and there are no flashbacks here, no scene setting, no places or events to piece together in our minds. We don’t really ever get a full picture of his past and can only guess at where he is headed in the future. So we are there only for the short ride into London, although what a ride it is and how it changes this man’s life forever!