Locke is a single location film that takes place in real time. If ever there was a recipe for disaster it is with this type of film. It is unbelievably difficult to get right. More often than not films like this fail because of the constraints their own setting enforces upon them.

Locke understands this very well and does what it should do. Keep it simple. The plot is straightforward and related to us through phone calls and internal conversations Locke has with his dead father. We are presented with a calm and collected man who, at the beginning of the film, after some consideration decides to go right instead of left. He is going on a long drive and…

Locke is a film that I found far more compelling on paper than the results on screen. After Steven Knight’s failed and schizophrenic debut, Hummingbird, Locke is certainly an improvement but it feels like a glorified radio play stretched and poorly fitted into a medium that rarely makes the best use of its attributes.

On the brink of his biggest job of his career, Ivan Locke drives across the country and by the time he reaches his destination his carefully constructed life will be forever altered. Although the film has a high concept hook (the audience is locked in a car with the protagonist for the duration of the film) the story at its heart is deliberately ordinary as a…

I rarely will declare a rating right after I watch a film. Usually, I’ll log it, and let it drift around my subconscious for a day or more, and then usually not until I’ve thoroughly thought it through while compositing a review. Not Locke. I knew I considered it a masterpiece right away, and worthy of a full five stars.

Two handers are difficult to pull off, and that was only emphasized even further to me during my recent viewing of Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay’s performances in Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years. The success was the subtle depth that lurked beneath the banal that was encoded in the script, and perfectly realized by two experienced veterans at the peak of…