Locke

Locke comes across as if you were filming, in real time with hidden cameras, the car ride of a man on the telephone dealing with a tricky life situation that could turn his successful professional and personal life upside down in the course of a single night. It is a situation that tests him on the character level, shaped by his difficult childhood, and on the professional level, in maintaining ambition in his responsibility for successfully carrying through an important social cause. It is also as if he is a charismatic man whose emotions and dilemmas you understand and sympathize with. Then all you have to do is edit it down to a smoothly running 85 minutes and you have a gripping study of a superbly played film character. Not everyone will understand that character and not everyone would behave like him, and the film is thus also an interesting test of the viewer’s hierarchy of values. Life can be a dog, but it only takes a few tricks to make an excellent film. If you know how. (2020-04-25)

The line between happiness and damnation can be dangerously fragile. Nothing groundbreaking, but nevertheless unique in the way it presents to the viewer the theme of the total inner disintegration of a balanced personality; from the first person, in the closed world of one car, where the work and personal lines of a major life transition collide over the phone, changing the protagonist's life from hour to hour. The conversations are well-written and give ample space to portray the psychological and emotional levels of Tom Hardy, whose performance again beautifully complements the depressing narrative tone and adds an unadorned authenticity to everything. (2017-02-01)

Tom Hardy can fully demonstrate why he is such a great actor. The camera focuses only on him the whole time, we don't see anyone else. To carry the entire film like this is an art and only a few actors can do it. Like Robert Redford, for example. Tom Hardy also belongs to them, and even though it's actually a relatively simple story and no epic things are addressed, it's still thrilling. An hour and a half of one person's life. It shows that our lives are not boring at all. (2014-08-08)

Imagine a movie that takes place in a car and it has a single character whom you watch for the entire hour and a half. I can’t help but be happy with the result, because Tom Hardy delivered a great performance. Steven Knight, in turn, did a great job directing this movie so I was on tenterhooks the entire time, bating my breath and wondering how easy it is to mess up your entire life. (2014-12-20)

On a minimum of space, there are quite a lot of emotions, for which, rather than the clumsy script (hysterics on the phone, talking to oneself in the rearview mirror?), the great Tom Hardy is responsible. Then there is also the best advertisement for the BMW multimedia interface in recent years and a few neon lights taken digitally to give it atmosphere. But there is no reason to dwell on it too much. It lacks "substance" and it’s far from solid. (2015-06-29)