A good movie

Since I have always been interested in Ken Loach’s work and since I really loved ‘I, Daniel Blake’, his previous movie, I was quite eager to check this follow-up. Well, it turned out to be another really strong directing effort from the British master. Of course, you could argue that Loach has basically spent most of his career making similar movies focusing on the grim and barren British social and economical environment. However, I was more shocked by the fact that the situation of Loach’s characters had actually become even worse since I started to watch his movies around 25 years ago. Indeed, back in the 80’s, during the Tchatcherism, the unemployment was maybe huge and, nowadays, it might seem fairly easy to get a job in the UK but the job conditions in the meantime have deteriorated so much, as dramatically displayed in this movie. Indeed, this time around, Loach had decided to focus on the parcel delivery business, which is obviously booming all around the Western world but it is notoriously shady so I was hardly surprised by what was displayed in this movie. However, it was still some powerful and heart-breaking material and Ken Loach made the most of it. The only thing that didn’t really work for me was the older son, Seb. I mean, his behaviour was rather erratic which was understandable but, in my opinion, he had such an erratic behaviour not because it made sense for the character but because it was a trick from the makers to avoid that the movie would be only composed of random scenes displaying Ricky and Abbie struggling at their work. Eventually, the whole family was in this together and everybody was trying their best while Seb was making a mess regardless of the consequences and it could have worked but only if they had spent more time on the poor kid. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a really solid movie and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like Ken Loach’s work.