Back in 2013, the idea that one of the guys who created Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? could make a movie about Tom Hardy talking on the phone while driving for ninety minutes and it’d be riveting drama would have been laughable. Then Steven Knight showed up with Locke. To be fair, Knight also happened to be the creator of Peaky Blinders and the screenwriter of Eastern Promises, but Locke turned out to be his breakthrough as a director. And now he’s using that cred to revive the “mature thriller” genre.
If you go back to the early ’90s, you’ll find a lot of movies that ran on Cinemax 24/7 and that have the same feel as the Serenity trailer. There was a huge run of tony neo-noirs with great casts (Jeremy Irons in particular), beautiful locations, and unusual twists, usually with the moral that having a master’s degree and a white-collar job doesn’t make you any less horny or dumb. In this case, the mark is fishing tour guide Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) who’s found on a tropical island by his ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) with a simple request: Her current husband (Jason Clarke) is an abusive monster towards her and Baker’s son, so how about feeding him to the sharks?
Pretty standard stuff, except the trailer implies everybody Baker is friends with, as well as a mysterious stranger (Jeremy Strong) who clings to a briefcase, seems to be fully aware he’s planning a murder and yet, for some reason, aren’t intervening. Are they in on it? Is there a supernatural element to all this? Is this guy just that much of a butthole and all Dill’s friends are really worried about is that he might get caught? Will McConaughey head off into the black, telling his friends he’s not coming back? The answers will arrive October 19th.
(via YouTube)
