Locke: 10 Reasons It's The Most Awesome Boring Film You'll Ever See

9. It Proves You Can Make A Good Film Out Of Anything

This is a film about concrete. Seriously €“ it's not the explosive concrete used by Bane, one of Hardy's previous roles, and it's not even concrete being used to prevent a disaster. It's just... concrete. Regular, average, workaday concrete, the kind you've seen plenty of times in a mixer. You see, part of the fallout surrounding Bethan's early delivery concerns Ivan's work, as he was supposed to be supervising the biggest concrete pour in Europe that doesn't involve military or nuclear projects. Every part of that last sentence is filled with qualifiers and mediocrity and doesn't present itself as the most exciting of movie premises, but that doesn't impede the film at all. If anything, it makes its triumph as a piece of experimental cinema even greater. Even though going through the minutiae of a concrete pour should be considered a dull affair, it really isn't here, precisely because we're only given the scope to view one character. This pour is important to him and us, and just like any movie task, it's fraught with difficulty €“ it just so happens that the difficulty here isn't an army of henchmen, but a half-cut Irishman and the fact everyone's already clocked off for the night. But such is the intense scrutiny the film gives to its subject that you'll find yourself lowering your sights and going with it, and left on the edge of your seat when Donal debates using the wrong concrete. It's oddly, weirdly compelling, and manages to frame an excellent speech around structural subsidence. Such things shouldn't be possible, and yet, they are.