Review of It's a Free World... (2007) by Thomas F — 27 Oct 2007

The theme of exploitation of immigrants is a noble one and Ken Loach should be praised for experimenting with the approach that he did. However he completely botched it. The main problem is that the protagonist, Angie, just has no identificatory potential whatsoever.

Great films can force you to take the perspective of murderers, psychopaths or other undesirables and empathize with them. Here however this is impossible. There is no descent, we are presented with a highly immoral, if not evil person, who from the beginning shows no concern for the consequences of her actions.

I ended up hating her, just wishing she'd stop talking with her nasty grating chavvy accent. It's such a shame, this could have been really good, but in the end it was ruined by a complete miscast lead and some severe problems with the plotting and dialogue.