His is the face you love, soon to be everywhere, a face locked on screen in Locke, both a star vehicle and a brilliant lesson for future filmmakers.
Tom Hardy was last seen as the masked villain in The Dark Knight Rises.
Menacing, magnificent, brawny-this is the Hardy you think you know.
Yet, like Brando and Burton, actors a parade of international critics is now comparing to him, Hardy has revealed a sensitive intelligence lurking behind a face the camera adores.
“I don’t feel very manly. I don’t feel rugged and strong and capable in real life, not how I imagine a man ought to be. So I seek it, to mimic it and maybe understand it, or maybe to draw it into my own reality. Scary people terrify me, but I can imitate them. I’m not a fighter. I’m a petite little bourgeois boy from London.
Tom Hardy, IMBD
Locke would be a direct path to Oscar contention if his role as the identity expert in Inception moved him far beyond the group of 10 actors to watch (Variety 2009).
In it, the London-born actor plays what he describes as a “bloke who falls apart on the road.” As an engineer managing the construction of a significant building project, Ivan Locke walks away from “the biggest concrete pour in the history of Europe, barring nuclear or military,” to deal with a personal problem two hours away in London. The film then locks in on that journey in the car and on Hardy’s face as he drives, fielding calls from his furious boss, a nervous second in command, his sons awaiting him at home for an anticipated soccer match, his loving wife and a woman we learn early on is about to give birth to his child.
A passion project from acclaimed screenwriter Steven Knight (Eastern Promises ), Locke was shot in less than a week with three digital cameras. It is minimalism at its best: taut, precise, and never short of gripping. Written for Hardy, this is a film for serious acting chops. So it should come as no surprise that Hardy has them, says his director, who believes Hardy is “the best actor in Europe right now.” Hardy’s simmer is just under the surface when he is gripping the wheel, eyes on the road, and sometimes, in the rearview mirror, where he rants at his dead father. This makes him irresistible to watch, even though he is seen only waist up, sitting behind the wheel.
Here is a film that works; a brilliant example of creative resourcefulness in the face of bloated budgets for big-screen cartoons. I admit a bias known well to you, dear readers, for narrative-driven projects over extraordinary effect wonders (fans of Gravity were mad at me when I said meh ), so forgive me for being predictable. Let it sit with aspiring writers/directors for a moment as a lesson of what’s possible. Find a good script, natural talent to lift and interpret and an artist with enough imagination to tell an unencumbered story. Forget trying to make the most significant fire. Stick to the fiery embers. Locke is heated with that lesson.
Then there’s the story itself. As a morality play, Locke doesn’t introduce as much as the strip down to the core the man who has built a decent life, brick by brick, and then makes a mistake that threatens to bring it all down. When Hardy assures all the players in this story, “I will do what needs to be done,” I believe him.
Is this our everyman? Not the sitcom buffoon, the smirking action star, the dimpled jester but a man who approaches life in deliberate strokes, responsibility as his guide, reason as his force. Potent, capable, contained.
Hardy squeezed in this performance between multiple films. Indeed, the actor is so busy that it may appear he has split himself in two in the next two years. Of many projects comes Taboo, an eight-part miniseries he wrote with his father to air on the BBC that will reunite him with Knight. That signals good karma to me. I can’t wait. Netflix, I’m looking at you to bring this home.
In the meantime, I’m planning a little Tom Hardy film festival, starting with Wuthering Heights, where he met his current love, Charlotte Riley.
I hear their chemistry is HOT.
An excellent place to start, methinks.
You may also enjoy: What makes a good man.
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