A24 Film No. 8: Locke (2013)

 

This eighth film in the A24 saga introduces us to a dimension of human drama centered on moral dilemmas and the consequences of our actions. Steven Knight’s Locke (2013) unfolds almost entirely within the interior of a moving car, following Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) during a single nighttime drive to London. Through this minimalist structure, the film transforms a seemingly simple narrative into a sustained ethical inquiry, centered on questions of responsibility, truth, and selfhood. As Locke confronts the fallout of an extramarital affair while attempting to maintain control over his professional and familial obligations, the film challenges conventional distinctions between “right” and “wrong”. By confining both its protagonist and its audience to a single perspective, I believe Locke invites a philosophical reflection on how moral identities are constructed, tested, and ultimately defined by the consequences they produce.

What first strikes about the film is its single location: Ivan’s car (yes, it moves along the highway, but the point is that we never leave the vehicle and remain entirely within his point of view). I personally enjoy films set in a single location because they truly test both the actor’s performance and the script’s ability to sustain engagement. They also evoke a more theatrical quality, where performance becomes central. In Locke, other characters appear only through phone calls, interacting with Ivan and providing a counterpoint to the moral position he has decided to take. Despite these strong sonic performances (including Olivia Colman, Andrew Scott, and a very young Tom Holland), the film ultimately remains a one-man show carried by Hardy.

The Moral Question

The movie’s storyline is deceptively simple: Ivan is driving to London to be present at the birth of his son, conceived during a one-night stand on a work trip. While driving, he must confess the affair to his wife and deal with several urgent professional issues. He is meant to supervise the largest concrete pour in European history the following morning, a detail the film emphasizes repeatedly—almost to the point of excess, highlighting how work-related pressures are often inflated to appear more important than they truly are. At its core, the story presents a classic moral dilemma: good versus bad, doing the “right thing” versus hurting others in the process. Yet the film immediately complicates this binary by asking who defines what is “good” and what the “right thing” actually is. From this point, Locke opens into a more philosophical exploration of the human condition. Even the character’s name gestures toward this reading, as the connection between Ivan Locke and John Locke, the English philosopher, is difficult to ignore. It is not naïve to suggest that John Locke’s theory of tabula rasa provides a key entry point into the film’s deeper meaning.

John Locke proposed that human beings are born without innate ideas or predetermined moral knowledge, and that experience shapes both understanding and ethical orientation. In the film, Ivan Locke’s moral framework is deeply influenced by his childhood trauma of having been abandoned by his father. Determined not to repeat this pattern, he frames his decision to attend the birth of his son as a moral necessity. The actions we see him take throughout the film are clearly shaped by this absence and by his desire to prevent the same harm from being passed on. One of the clearest articulations of his moral position occurs during the imaginary conversations he has with his father, whom he envisions sitting in the back seat of the car. In these moments, Locke confronts the damage his father caused him while asserting his own commitment to being a better man. By facing his mistakes, he wants to “straighten up” the Locke name, heal inherited trauma, and stop harm from repeating in a cycle.

At the same time, Locke’s understanding of morality is strongly tied to responsibility, which for him means showing up, taking charge, and ensuring that systems continue to function. This is most clearly embodied by the concrete pour he supervises remotely from the car through his conversations with his trainee, Donal (Andrew Scott). Locke repeatedly emphasizes that concrete must be carefully controlled, leaving no room for error. In contrast, the personal relationships he attempts to manage unravel precisely because they resist this same logic of control. The film subtly suggests that Locke’s ethical commitment may function less as an act of care and more as a way of maintaining control over chaos, revealing a tension between responsibility and emotional accountability.

Locke insists on telling his wife the truth and on making sure the job he is responsible for is properly handled. The film deliberately leaves space for the audience to reflect on whether we align with his decisions. We are confronted with the consequences of his supposedly “good” actions: his wife is deeply hurt, his sons (waiting at home for him to watch a football match) experience abandonment, and his coworkers feel the threat of his absence the following day. As a result, Locke loses his wife, his home, and his job. Is it all worth it for doing what is supposed to be right? Right for whom? While Locke claims he is acting for the sake of his new son, it becomes increasingly clear that his choices are also deeply tied to how he sees himself.

Through the phone conversations that structure nearly the entire film, we learn that Locke has constructed an image of himself as an impeccable worker, though not necessarily as a present husband. His conversations with his wife suggest emotional absence and a tendency to prioritize work above all else, symbolized by the concrete marks he leaves in the kitchen when he comes home (marks his wife must clean up). When speaking with Bethan, the woman he impregnated, Locke consistently distances himself emotionally. When she tells him she loves him, he repeatedly insists that he does not love her back, framing his presence at the birth as a moral obligation rather than an emotional choice. In this sense, Locke appears to follow a chivalric moral code, acting out of duty rather than desire. This raises questions about the substance of his morality. His ethics are not entirely “good”: his treatment of Bethan, and the way he speaks about her to his wife, reveals a darker side of his character. He diminishes her, pities her, and shows little empathy, exposing the limits of his ethical self-conception.

The film suggests that moral dilemmas always contain a larger picture, and that there are multiple angles from which to judge whether something is good or bad. There is no entirely right or wrong answer; in the end, our actions are measured by how we live with their consequences. We are always going to hurt someone. Locke portrays, in a condensed and focused manner, the minute-to-minute decisions of everyday life, in which we must navigate the good, the right, the bad, and everything in between, while confronting the effects of our choices. Shadows of our traumas and wounds are projected onto others and often used to justify our decisions. In this way, the film explores the construction of the self not only as an individual process, but as one shaped socially and relationally.

Returning to the film’s single location, the car can also be understood as a moral space. It functions as a liminal zone in which Locke is suspended between lives, roles, and identities: he is no longer fully present in his old life as a husband, father, and worker, yet he has not fully entered the new one he claims to be choosing. This state of in-betweenness mirrors the moral uncertainty that structures the film. Confined to the car, Locke occupies a transitional space where decisions are made but consequences are deferred, reinforcing the sense that his ethical position remains unresolved. Because the camera never leaves this enclosed environment, the audience is trapped inside Locke’s moral reasoning, forced to endure his logic without the possibility of distance or relief. The claustrophobia produced by this confinement complicates our identification with him: rather than inviting straightforward empathy, the film raises the question of whether we are meant to share Locke’s ethical struggle or to experience the rigidity of his moral absolutism.

The film does not offer a clear closure, particularly for an audience that might long to witness the aftermath of the consequences Locke faces after this night of driving and phone calls. It ends with the sound of the newborn crying over the phone, a moment that can be read as a rebirth for Locke—a new opportunity emerging from a night that appears to have destroyed everything he previously had. Does this moment imply redemption? We never see him step out of the car, but it does suggest the beginning of a new chapter rather than a resolution.