Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A pub landlord in a previously thriving mining community struggles to hold onto his pub. Meanwhile, tensions rise in the town when Syrian refugees are placed in the empty houses in the community.
Ken Loach's final film (reportedly) is a compassionate if somewhat schematic drama about working-class solidarity and refugee integration in post-industrial northern England. The plot is earnest and morally clear but follows a predictable arc of tension-then-reconciliation that Loach has visited before, with familiar social-realist beats. The non-professional and semi-professional cast deliver naturalistic performances consistent with Loach's method — credible and grounded, though not especially revelatory. Roger Pratt's cinematography is functional social realism — authentic in its bleakness but not cinematically distinctive. Novelty suffers somewhat because this is well-trodden Loach territory thematically and stylistically, though the specific Syrian refugee-meets-mining-community dynamic gives it contemporary resonance. The ending feels muted and somewhat abrupt, offering a muted gesture of hope that feels emotionally underearned given the weight of the drama that precedes it.