Locke

Como si estuviera filmando en tiempo real, con cámaras ocultas, el viaje en coche de un hombre que se enfrenta a una situación vital que puede poner patas arriba su exitosa vida profesional y personal en una noche. Una situación que pone a prueba su carácter, formado por su difícil infancia, y a nivel profesional, para mantener su ambición en la responsabilidad de la realización exitosa de una importante causa social. Y parece ser un hombre carismático cuyas emociones y dilemas comprendes y simpatizas. Luego solo hay que editarla para que dure 85 minutos sin problemas y tenemos un apasionante estudio de carácter de un personaje cinematográfico brillantemente interpretado. No lo entenderá cualquiera, ni se comportaría como él, por lo que la película es también una interesante prueba de los valores del espectador. La vida puede ser dura, pero todo lo que se necesita para hacer una buena película basta muy poco. Cuando se sabe cómo hacerlo. (25.04.2020)

Excelente solo de Tom Hardy, que conduce un coche durante 90 minutos y nadie más aparece en la película excepto él. Su vida se está desmoronando, su amante está dando a luz, su mujer llorando y vomitando, y 218 camiones deben traerle en nueve horas todo el hormigón necesario para la mayor obra de hormigón de la historia de Europa. El diálogo se desarrolla en forma de llamadas telefónicas graduales y es excelente (por otro lado, los monólogos de Hardy son un poco rebuscados y no tan interesantes). Formalmente, recuerda un poco a Enterrado (que, para variar, se desarrolla todo el tiempo en un ataúd). El director y guionista Steven Knight supo manejar muy bien el difícil tema y en un espacio mínimo creó un drama totalmente funcional y realista que nos mantiene entretenidos (e incluso tiene sus momentos divertidos). (04.07.2014)

The thriller label that Filmbooster and IMBD gave to Locke generates the wrong expectations. I waited pretty long for those family and work phone calls to be interrupted by some extortionist or psychopath who would terrorise the protagonist over the phone. Yet, to my surprise, nobody like that called and the entire film stayed with the work and family calls. But it wasn’t boring even for a second, which must be credited to all interested parties. (02.08.2014)

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. (19.12.2014)

Unexpectedly, in the end, a very enjoyable one-man show, where Tom Hardy gives a very admirable performance and even this is not much of a thriller to speak of, his pleasant voice makes the film beautiful to watch and listen to. Compared to Robert Redford's All Is Lost, it is twice the experience. 75% (08.08.2014)

A road movie with a depressing aftertaste. Hardy and his BMW never leave the screen and just watching the suffering in the face of the former is worth it. A self-confident person slips slowly into being a mental wreck, but you don’t find out if he goes over the edge until the end. One mistake, one road, one bad day. Donald, don’t trust God when it comes to concrete! (04.08.2014)

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. (29.06.2015)

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. (01.02.2017)

All it takes is to put Tom Hardy in a car with a solid script, and he'll deliver a minimalist acting masterpiece that slowly wraps you around its finger through a series of phone calls. During a single drive — less than two hours long — Ivan Locke loses everything he's built up until that point (quite literally). I enjoyed slowly uncovering the kind of person Ivan really is. While I found him somewhat relatable — especially during his calls about the massive concrete-pouring project — I mostly felt for the people closest to him (his wife, kids, and "mistress"). He manipulates them without fully realizing how much he's messing up, convincing himself that he only made one mistake, and for noble reasons at that. But life isn't black and white, and Ivan is too complex to easily label as good or bad. That's what makes Locke feel so real and compelling. (19.06.2018)

Outside of Locke, Steven Knight was the writer and director behind the ambitious but somewhat sympathetically infantile Hummingbird, starring Jason Statham, whose central motif was once again man, his principles, ineffable cyclicality, and the surrounding world, which is the enemy. The screenplay for Locke is basically brilliant, and I'll give a nipple for the fact that it was written in the introduction that film databases of the world would call the genre a thriller, of which it has some of the parameters (the action takes place almost in real time, a protagonist removed from his environment, dealing with hostility all around), but otherwise it's a pure drama about how a basically systematic protagonist decides to take an unexpected step and pragmatically carries it out according to his principles and procedures. It's terribly easy to keep a relative distance from Locke thanks to its ambition and an ending that few will probably find satisfying, except that you sort of have to admit that this is a genuinely bold move from director Steven Knight, comparable to the central character's struggle for his perceived soul. (22.09.2014)

Tom Hardy can fully show why he is such a great actor. Here the camera focuses solely on him the whole time, and we don't see anyone else. To sustain the entire film like this is an art, and only some actors can do it. Like Robert Redford. Tom Hardy belongs among them, and even though it's actually a fairly simple story without any epic elements, it's still gripping. An hour and a half of one man's life. It turns out that our lives are not the least bit boring. (07.08.2014)