I could have easily placed Mad Max: Fury Road here - Hardy is gruff and muted through much of the film, but that's kinda the whole point. However, instead I'm going to give a shout-out to another of his films that features an awful lot driving which far too few people checked out. Locke is a movie that is unbearably tense, yet features nothing more than Tom Hardy going down the motorway. All the other actors (including future Spider-Man, Tom Holland, as Hardy's son) are present in voice-only over phonecalls, leaving us focused in on Ivan Locke as we see in pretty much realtime him leave his life behind. The mystery of why he's shirking all responsibility is slowly teased out, and the reveal of the various motivations is handled very well by Hardy, who purrs with a surprising Welsh accent (literally done because why the hell not). But beyond all that, Hardy does the impossible - he makes concrete interesting. All of this is happening on the night before he's meant to oversee "the biggest concrete pour in Europe outside of nuclear and military projects", and the logistics of it are treated to the same amount of screentime as his crumbling family life. He describes in depth the nature of his work and the substance, yet keeps you utterly engaged throughout. Phenomenal.
