Slideshow
SORRY WE MISSED YOU
U.K., France, Belgium, 2019
Directed by Ken Loach
Written by Paul Laverty
With Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor
Approx. 100 mins. DCP.
Loach trains his incisive lens on the human cost of our shopping habits and changing workforce. After losing their home in a financial crisis, Ricky and Abby trade the car she uses as a visiting nurse for a van, so Ricky can work as a delivery driver. The advantages of being self-employed come with the constant pressure of meeting impossible deadlines with no margin for error, sickness, or family emergency. Loach’s compassionate, hard-hitting drama will make you rethink your expectations the next time you enjoy the convenience of overnight delivery.
Reviews
“Critic’s Pick. Brutally moving… [Ken Loach is] one of Earth’s most venerable and venerated directors. He’s almost without peer as a filmmaker formidably committed to exposing the sins of our wages… You believe this family. You believe in them. There are also all kinds of meaningful, seemingly disposable smart details… Globalism’s faceless grind couldn’t be more local, more personal… The movie’s as pungent as PARASITE… But life: that’s the tragedy.”
– Wesley Morris, The New York Times
“[Ken Loach is] the Bernie Sanders of filmmakers.”
– Steven Mears, Film Comment
“Ken Loach delivers one of his best films… a drama of such searing human empathy and heartbreak that its climactic scenes may actually impede your breathing. (This) riveting new film lays bare the unsparing predation of the gig economy in which even the staunchest work ethic is no match for reality. A number of individual scenes late in the action are simply shattering, offering prime illustrations of what Loach does best. The extraordinary Hitchen…anchors the drama with wrenching authenticity. An expertly judged and profoundly humane movie. You’d have to be made of stone not to be moved to your core by it.”
– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
“The times have caught up with Loach, and they have pushed him to the top of his game. He is now making films that connect, with a nearly karmic sense of timing, to the social drama of our moment. (An) intimate and powerful drama about… trying to make a go of it in the gig economy. Quite a suspenseful movie… (which) Loach stages with supreme confidence and flow. He has become as supple and popping a dramatist as Mike Leigh. A fraught, touching, galvanizing movie.”
– Owen Gleiberman, Variety