A captivating Tom Hardy is in the driver’s seat for the one-man show “Locke,” but like many experimental films, this one suffers from its self-imposed constraints.
Hardy (Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises”) plays Locke, a coolly rational construction manager on a skyscraper project who, in a series of phone calls on a drive home, tries to stop his life from falling apart. His wife is about to leave him, a woman with whom he had a meaningless fling is giving birth, and his building is endangered.
Writer-director Steven Knight keeps the gimmick going with new complications Locke thinks he can manage with his typical supreme competence. He’s a chilly, unemotive figure (even if he does occasionally get into angry arguments with himself), which creates a challenge that Hardy responds to with admirable depth.
Too bad the film doesn’t have a lot to say, except that one terrible choice can ruin you.