Ken Loach doing his usual social documenting of working class nitty grittiness.It's "Boys from the Blackstuff" meets "Auf Wiedersehen Pet"; indignant about the selfish "Me Me Me" property developer greed of the Thatcher years – but leavened by typical Scouse (and Manc) sarcasm, and softened with a short if not so sweet romance.Robert Carlyle is Stevie, fresh out of jail, and having a go at life outside Scotland; gets taken on as a construction worker; is found an empty council flat to squat; is quickly shacking up with Susie, a fragile, troubled, Irish singer. He's soon back into his petty thieving ways; knocking off machinery from the site. "Labourin is rubbish, boxer shorts is better (selling of)" seems to be the extent of his aspiration. Stevie and Susie are both "unstable" characters so arguing is bound to be happening; he's having to drag her out of bed: "Depression is for the middle classes – the rest of us have got an early start in the morning". Then he gets news his mothers died – so he's off up to Scotland for the funeral. Cue a black comedy scene at the crematorium with inept swinging of urn – mother ash thrown all over the party of mourners.Returning, Stevie is just in time to see Susie sticking a needle up her arm. It's at this point Robert Carlyle breaks out into a warm up version of Begbie from Trainspotting: nut-ting people in the gob, stamping on their wotsits etc. And as for Susie: She's dumped. End of. No sympathy with junkie smack-heads has Stevie. Or Begbie. Or even Robert Carlyle.Ricky Tomlinson is in the film too – as a mouthy Trade Union sympathiser, his Commie vitriol redeemed by sarky gags and loud laughing; a bit like a younger version of Jim Royle, minus the beard.Towards the end i was thinking: someone's gonna be falling off this dodgy scaffolding without his tin hat on in a minute – and sure enough, he was. And Them Barstewards are gonna have to pay for that. We need some Natural Justice here. Lets burn the whole flipping lot down. Any volunteers? Yeah. Stevie will do it. With glee.The film is unaffected in its down to earth portrayal of the working class bloke: the thieving cheating lying lazy barsteward that skives around as cheap casual labour on building sites while fiddling the dole type of working class bloke. The type that doesn't really give a monkeys. As long as it gets paid. Even if it doesn't get paid enough. Cus the company employing it is an exploitative cheating lying greedy barsteward too.Its a right riff raffy racket is the Building Trade. Seems to be the message. Something i – and all of us – knows already. So nothing new there then. But my – and your – cynicism will get a nice pat on its back.I wouldn't want any of this lot building a house for me.

This unpretentious British indie film is a rough diamond in the rough. It chronicles the lives of a handful of blue collar workers trying to survive in early 90's London. It's almost documentary in style and narrative, which lends a feeling of authenticity, which is helped also by fine performances all around. Shows the humor, frustration and dashed dreams in an unforgiving society, and it has heart. It is at times funny, heart wrenching, and touching. The accents are thick, so you may appreciate the subtitles that are on some versions. I found them distracting, so I put some tape over the bottom of the screen. I had to strain a few times to understand, but I don't think the subtitles were necessary. Well worth a watch.

I first saw this film, drunk one Friday after a heavy nights drinking after work on a building site. I was then a bricklayer - a job I had done for over five years. Watching this film, it dawned on me that this was filmed in the part of London where i lived. I could truly relate to it and I would have sworn that the actors had themselves spent their lives working on sites it was so realistic. Go to any site and you will see at least one character who you could say directly related to a charater in this film. The safety aspect has been cleaned up a lot now but back then, sites were a dangerous place to work. Accidents were common and the end scenes were not in any way unrealistic.The thing that did it for me was the portrayal of the working class of Britain. The sentiments were all there, the humour, the desparation, the sense of wanting to rise above the rest and the shattered dreams. They are all here. I would say that if anyone from abroad wanted to study the character of the British working class then they MUST see this film. It is tough, gritty and full of humour...a truly remarkable piece of film that is sadly neglected. Buy it, Rent it, Steal it, Borrow it...whatever you do SEE IT!

I've always been astonished by Ken Loach's ability to make me forget that these are actors that I'm watching, or that this is a movie on a set, etc. The characters in this film are so real, so lifelike, that it was almost like watching a documentary. The film very wisely employs subtitles for the English dialogue, much or most of which would be unintelligible to an American audience.Several of the reviews I have read of this film call it a comedy. Well, although there are one or two comic scenes, to me this is far from a comedy. This is a bitter and biting howl of rage against the plight of the working class in the UK. These men are used and exploited by their employers. There is no doubt that these construction sites would be cited for safety violations, or even closed down, if they were in the USA. and the owner-managers might well be prosecuted, since their willful negligence ultimately results in a death. What is lacking in the British working class, if this film is any guide, is any sense of upward mobility, any hope, any sense that I can make it out of this and find a better life. The one exception to this is the protagonist's girl friend, who is a monumentally untalented aspiring singer, and in her case we don't feel that there is much hope either.