August 22, 2014 -- A man sits in his car at a stop light and signals a left turn. As he waits for the light to change from red to green, he thinks about something that is troubling him. The light turns green, but he doesn't turn. He is lost in thought. Impatient, the driver behind him honks his horn. Suddenly, the man decides not to turn left. He turns right instead. He embarks on a journey which changes his life and the people close to him.

This is an unusual movie in that there is only one person on screen during the entire film. The other actors in the film are heard through a car speaker phone, but are never seen. This is a film about one man driving a car at night in England, on his way to a hospital as his old life disappears into his rear view mirror. Despite the inherent limitations of this form of narrative, this is a very powerful film.

The lone actor on screen in this film is Tom Hardy, who plays Ivan Locke, a construction foreman in charge of the biggest concrete pour in European history later this morning, but from his car, he calls his assistant, Donal (voiced by Andrew Scott, who plays Jim Moriarty on the TV series “Sherlock”) at the construction site to tell him he won't be in today to oversee the pour. He has something else to do. Using the hands-free speaker phone in the car, he tells his family he won't be home to watch the big soccer game, either.

All hell breaks loose as his boss, Gareth (voiced by Ben Daniels of “Jack the Giant Slayer”) learns of his desertion and fires him after a profanity-laced rant. Locke calmly tells him he will make sure the huge concrete pour will go ahead as scheduled and everything will be O.K. He will supervise Donal over the phone. His boss is not convinced of this plan, and neither are the corporate executives in America in charge of the project. Locke and Donal conspire to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible, and that means resisting their corporate overlords.

When Locke's wife is told the reason for his trip to the hospital, she is very hurt and very angry. Locke's sons don't understand what is going on. In fact, nobody understands what is going on, even Locke himself. Locke's boss asks him why he didn't just call in sick and take the easy way out.

It turns out Locke's father had abandoned the family when he was a child. Locke spends part of his time on screen talking to his dead father, who he hates with a passion. He is determined not to do what his father did. He is just as determined not to be an absent father as he is not to have a faulty building foundation. He is trying mightily to hold everything together, despite his own failings. He is trying to be responsible, even while his life falls apart.

The screenplay by writer-director Steven Knight (“Eastern Promises”) shows a keen insight into the psychology of the sons of alcoholic fathers. Tom Hardy, one of the best actors working today, shows his versatility in this subtle performance. He mainly uses his voice to show how this character feels as his carefully constructed life falls to pieces. If you want to see Hardy's range as an actor, take a look at an earlier film where he plays a very different kind of character in “Bronson” (2008). The supporting actors also do a fine job with their voice roles, including Locke's wife (played by Ruth Wilson of “Anna Karenina”) and Bethan (Olivia Colman of “Hyde Park on Hudson”).

Knight uses a number of techniques to vary to look of the film within the limitations imposed by the narrative. He uses exterior and interior shots of the car, sometimes the camera is in another vehicle. There are also some shots of the traffic on the highway and the cities along the road. The majority of shots appear to have been filmed from a rig on the hood of the car, shooting Hardy through the windshield at an angle. The camera makes good use of the vehicle and city lights reflected off the windshield, which have an ethereal quality.

This is a 2013 British film which was just recently released on video in this country. This is one of the year's best films so far. I usually don't bother writing reviews of movies unless I have seen them in a movie theater, but this film is exceptional. I rented the DVD of this movie from Red Box and watched it on my home theater (which has a high definition projector, a surround sound system and a large movie screen). This film rates an A.

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