We do a lot of complaining about bad storytelling and knee-jerk trailers, so when something really interesting in both departments comes along, you have to give credit where credit is due.

Locke, starring Tom Hardy and just about nobody else, has a trailer that …well, if it were a novel, the blurb would say, “I just can’t put this one down.” Unlike the cliché’d shock-chord nonsense or the lame tell-the-whole-story trailers that scatter the landscape these days, the trailer for Locke asks a tantalizing question – and not one of those silly open-ended, “How far would you got to save you family?” things than doesn’t tell you (or actually even ask you) anything.

Written and directed by relative newcomer (to the big screen, anyway) ***, Hardy plays a successful construction worker with a big deal about to happen…and who has something happen to him on his commute home that turns his whole world upside-down. It actually looks as if Hardy shoots the entire movie while driving his car, talking to a wide range of people on his hands-free phone – his wife, his family, his business partners and more. And for all that potentially precious contrivance, this actually looks interesting.

It also shows that you can still make trailers you actually want to see – ones that aren’t bad copies of other people’s trailers from the previous century.

Watch and enjoy. Locke opens nationwide on April 25.

 
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