How many different angles can you film one man on an 85-minute car ride in the middle of the night?  As shown by longtime writer and sophomore director Steven Knight, the answer is many.

Tom Hardy stars as Ivan Locke, an otherwise by-the-book family man living in suburban England and working as a construction foreman for a successful company. He provides for his wife and son, sharing in his son’s enthusiasm for English Premier League matches, and is an otherwise fine husband. On this night, however, Ivan finds himself on a midnight trip to visit a woman from his recent past. On a business trip away from his family roughly nine months earlier, his indiscretions led to an affair and the consequences of which would unfortunately come back to affect him in a serious way. Told completely from Ivan’s perspective as he speaks on the phone to various people in his life, including his wife, son, colleagues, and the woman in trouble, the film is a unique and compelling tale of a man trying to make the right decision.

The formal conceit alone is worth giving this one a watch—we literally never leave the car, and every shot is either one of Ivan, or of his speakerphone screen displaying the name of the caller. For a fully sustainable 85 minutes, we learn more pieces of the story and hear back from several of the people in Ivan’s life. There is even some action, as Ivan struggles to fix an emergency at work, risks losing his job, and takes care of the crumbling pieces of his carefully planned life, all from the vector of his driver’s seat. Rarely do we feel bored by the setup, and also due to the sheer watchability of Tom Hardy, the form totally works.

The recurring motivation for Ivan to continue this mad trajectory away from the safety and prior responsibilities of his everyday life is the ghost of his apparently neglectful father, always over his shoulder. Ivan repeatedly glances into the rearview mirror at the empty backseat, starting many one-sided conversations. Because his father was never there for him, he is compelled to do the right thing in his current situation.

The trick? What is the “right thing” isn’t as easy to decipher as it should be. Ignore the lonely woman in trouble and keep his house and job in order, or destroy every ounce of trust he has built with his boss, his assistant, his wife, and son, and acknowledge the mistress. Were the stakes any lower, perhaps this film wouldn’t have worked so well. Luckily, Knight, an excellent writer, keeps us fixated on Ivan’s quandary, all of which is so relatable.

The film gets a lot of credit for its form, and it is all deserved. Not only is it a bold and challenging way to tell the story, but it also so neatly frames Ivan’s world that it actually enhances our experience of negotiating the moral ground alongside this conflicted man. We admire him by the end of the ride. In nearly real time, we have literally made this journey with him. His resolve doesn’t change dramatically throughout the course of the film, despite the ever-growing mess he leaves behind him, yet we somehow feel the arc is complete. The end of Ivan’s journey seems like the end of something much greater. He has passed through the tunnel (literally, several times), and has come out the other side someone that may not look too different on the outside, but that, somewhere inside, is.