REVIEW: Keeping It Together While It Falls Apart in ‘Locke’

I have to admit I was reluctant to see Steven Knight’s Locke for two reasons. The minor one was that I gleaned from the trailer that this was some sort of cerebral Speed (I rarely read about a film before I see it), in which the hero, Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), is forced to keep driving because of a ticking bomb in the trunk — or a ticking bomb somewhere else, or his family is being held hostage — all the while negotiating his/their survival on the car’s speakerphone. It isn’t that, but it sort of is: he is forced to drive, but it is for moral and compassionate reasons, not a life-threatening situation. The major reason I was reluctant to see this: It’s playing on the big, huge screen at the Cinerama Dome at the Arclight Hollywood, which means that if it isn’t a blockbuster — and it isn’t — it’s got to be so genius that it would likely thrust me into an existential funk that would make me want to throw in the towel on my own endeavors.