Locomotive follows Dicey, a former straight-edge musician who took some minor success from a band he started years ago, as he tries to reconnect after his solo career as a DJ takes a dive. Unfortunately, the band moved on without him, so he tries to fall back on a former love interest, a groupie for the band, who he also left behind.
Locomotive wants you to judge. It is an exploration of people engaged in damaging relationships. Its characters are polarizing, as hard to sympathize with as they are to hate. Are they victims, or self-enablers? The movie withholds the emotional cues and back-story that could make either choice easy. By demanding the audience judge the characters from a distance, the final opinions say as much about the viewer as they do the characters.