I wake up in Bingham, as was intended. Then I head home to
L, hoping she’s having as long a lie in as last week.
Derby win their
last home match of the season, 4-2 over Watford, at a
canter. Bring on the play offs, that’s five straight wins now. Then I get the
bus straight back to Nottingham and meet L at Broadway.
The whole ninety minutes of Locke takes places inside his car
and Tom Hardy (as Locke) is the only actor you see on screen. The supporting actors
and actresses appear only as voices on the other end of his mobile phone. Thankfully
on a hands-free kit or else it may have been a bit hard to follow, not to
mention dangerous.
I was a little sceptical about the whole idea and almost skipped this
one in protest at such dullness. Good job I didn’t.
Ivan Locke is a construction manager about to oversee a massive foundation laying exercise for a huge new building. On the eve
of this he climbs into his car and makes a phone call to tell his boss Gareth
(Ben Daniels) that he isn’t going to be there to supervise. That isn’t going to
go down well.
Then he phones his wife Katrina (Ruth Wilson) to tell her he
isn’t coming home to her tonight and to tell his sons he won’t be there to watch the football
with them. Katrina has even put the club shirt on for him and has the sausages under
the grill. Then he tells her why, another woman is about to give birth to his
child. That's going to go down even less well.
Then he phones Bethan (Olivia Colman). A woman he describes
as plain and old with whom he once briefly worked and had a one night stand
with, mostly out of sympathy. She is now giving birth to his child with very
poor timing.
He has decided to abandon everything to attend the
birth even though he barely knows her and certainly doesn’t love her
because the child is his
responsibility.
While he makes the drive down the motorway from Birmingham
to London, we are party to the
calls he makes and receives. All the while his personal and professional life collapses
around him.
After confessing his infidelity, his wife bans him from their
home. Meanwhile his company bosses in Chicago
fire him, yet his sense of duty means he takes every step to
ensure the pour of the concrete that will make the foundations will
succeed, talking his stand-in Donal (Andrew Scott), a man who
likes a drink or two, through what he needs to do.
Locke is a man with an unrelenting belief that he doing the right thing.
I though it was excellent. A refreshingly low budget,
captivating voyeur type film and something quite different. Tom Hardy is terrific
but he has to be, no one else was going to carry the film if he didn’t. Simply because
there is no one else.
After the film we pub crawl Canning Circus. The Borlase, the
Falcon and the Organ Grinder.
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