It's a Free World...
2007
***½
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis, Frank Gilhooley, Leslaw Zurek, Joe Siffleet, Colin Coughlin, Maggie Russell, Raymond Mearns, Davoud Rastgou
When Angie loses yet another job, she teams up with her friend to set up a temporary staffing agency for migrant workers in London. Although the agency is illegal, this is not a film about her run-ins with the law, but a thought-provoking morality tale about desperate people. Ken Loach and his regular screenwriting partner Paul Laverty are well-known defenders of the downtrodden, but who exactly is it in this balanced story? Angie starts off as a well-meaning idealist who is eager to succeed in order to spend more time with her neglected son, but when the grand plans begin to fall apart, she abandons her scruples to keep the business afloat. However, the exploited workers hardly act like helpless victims when they don't get paid on time. This is a believable drama with a strong lead performance by the first-timer Kierston Wareing.
