“You push until it's upright and you stick to the plan”.

Eighty minutes locked with Tom Hardy could be some of the most rewarding time you'll ever spend stuck inside a car. This one-set, real-time drama is a close relative of films like Colin Farrell's Phone Booth and Ryan Reynolds' Buried where tension is ratcheted through unseen forces. In this case, a pregnant woman and a construction site. Unlikely ingredients for what is one of the most thrilling films you'll see this year.

Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) is Ivan Locke, a respected engineer who, on the eve of Europe's largest concrete pour – it is his expertise – abandons pretty much everything: his colleagues, the site, his wife and family. He's heading south to London where a woman he barely knows and likes even less is having his baby. “How could I love you? I don't know you.” But unlike his late father, Locke is going to do the right thing by the child and be there from the start. Clearly there's a harboured grudge.

With all performances bar one phoned in (literally), Locke rides on Hardy's magnetic performance. Given there's no one else on screen, it's a good thing you can't take your eyes off him. Of course, he has tremendous material to work with. Written and directed by Steven Knight (he penned Cronenburg's Eastern Promises among others), this taught narrative bounces between Locke's management of the pour, his wife, children and the pregnant woman (Olivia Colman – Hyde Park On Hudson – and Ruth Wilson among the voice cast). And it is sensationally taught – a powder keg of suspense threatening to explode, all without a gun or villain in sight.

Locke is a provocative film as it challenges what your own response would be in his situation. In abandoning his family, has Locke become the man he so despised? “Watching you come creeping back was worse than staying away,” he shouts to the memory of his father. It's chilling stuff. Consider that this is but one man in a car for an hour and a half, and it's a welcome reminder of how much can be achieved by two artists and the simplest methods. It's a bold experiment, and it's extraordinary.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at The Reel Room, Sydney on 11 August 2014