Ken Loach has made some powerful films, but many of his works are about worthy issues rather than being worthy art. He strongly resembles John Sayles in this respect. And like Sayles he demonstrates a concern for the working class, an interest in the fate of socialism, focuses on unions, general strikes, the physical and mental state of the working population and the formations and collapses of various political movements. He's tackled Stalinism, the Spanish Civil War, the suffocation of post war East Germany, the British general strikes of the 1920s, Britain's conflicts with Ireland, the Trotskyist movements of the 60s and early 70s and now with "Route Irish" the West's ongoing wars in the Middle East.Today Loach's films are mostly ignored or struggle to find distribution and/or financing. Back in the 60s, however, he was seen as a major force. His 1966 drama "Cathy Come Home", for example, is generally credited with making homelessness and unemployment a political issue in Britain, though Loach would go on to criticise the work: "It boils down to a structural problem within society," he said of Cathy. "Who owns the land? Who owns the building industry? How do we decide what we produce, where we produce it, under what conditions? You can't abstract housing from the economic pattern. So it is a political issue; the film just didn't examine it at that level." In an attempt to make more substantial works, Loach teamed up with Trotskyist playwright Jim Allen. Together the duo made a string of dramas ("The Big Flame", "The Rank and File", "Days of Hope" etc), most of which chartered the betrayals and defeats of the working class by Labour ministers and union heads. These films valorised workers and activists, and tended to posit reforms (and socialism itself) as being impossible because of "traitorous leadership". Loach's "Land and Freedom" would later say a similar thing; that the Soviet Union's collapse (and the downfall of the Spanish Revolution) lay not with socialism, but Stalinism.Loach then made a series of features ("Poor Cow", "Kes", "Family Life", "The Gamekeeper", "Looks and Smiles") which focused on a different dimension of working class life. Gone was class warfare, in was simple survival. These films are mostly tragedy's, Loach's characters beaten, battered, toiling, pushed into mental disorder or barely subsiding on state hand-outs. Audiences today may view these films as being ridiculously grim, but they need to be put into context. "They're the enemy in another guise," Loach wrote of British prime minister's Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher (their political parties, Labour and Conservative, both morphed into right or centre-right wing groups over the space of a decade), who supported the Vietnam War, dismantled unions, concocted anti-strike laws and began the deliberate creation of mass unemployment. The films try to shine a light on the underside of Thatcher's Britain, a form of budding neoliberalism which she described with the acronym TINA: "There Is No Alternative".As a response to the changes washing over Britiain, Loach turned to making documentaries in the 1980s ("I'd lost direction with regards to feature films"). These delved into everything from steel workers' strikes, factory closures, British Leyland, police violence, unemployment, media censorship/ownership, British Rail and the NHS. When television stations began censoring and threatening these docs, however, Loach returned to feature film-making. His films during this period tend to be defeatist fare like "Riff-Raff" and "Raining Stones", all about a kind of guerrilla warfare, in which the individual, the now defeated working class, resists capitalism by exploiting loopholes, liberties and state granted unemployment benefits. Resistance doesn't come to an end, it's just now individual rather than collective. Sticking your neck out has been replaced by ducking and diving, perhaps best seen in "Bread and Roses".Reinvigorated by the West's adventure's in the Middle East, Loach then made "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" and "Route Irish", the former linking the bloody history of British Imperialism to present neo-colonial operations in Iraq, a link which the latter film makes explicit. In the mainstream media, both films were met with venom (mostly by papers owned by Rupert Murdoch). The education secretary of Britain damned Loach for "rubbishing his own country" and "glamourising the IRA". The Times demanded that Loach be committed and likened him to pro-Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. The Telegraph deemed Loach "poisonous", though admitted that they didn't see the films ("I don't need to, anymore than I need to read Mein Kampf to know what a louse Hitler was"). Of course Loach has been making the same films for decades. It's just that now few are sympathetic to his politics.In any case, "Route Irish" tells the tale of Fergus, a former SAS member and later private contractor-mercenary in Iraq. The film's title refers to the US military's nickname for the stretch of highway connecting the International Zone in Baghdad with the city's airport ("the most dangerous road in the world"). The film is structured as a film noir, Fergus our noir hero who investigates the death of a friend and uncovers the evils of his government. But in a cyber-age of 24 hour news, nothing Fergus discovers surprises us. We're smarter than artist, film and hero, a fact which makes "Route Irish" a dull affair. Loach is right to draw attention to covered up war crimes committed against Iraqis (often by contractors exempt from both international and Iraqi law), and is right to explain how thoroughly war has been privatised (there were around 160,000 foreign contractors in Iraq at the height of the occupation)...but the problem is that we know this and more. Outrage has long morphed into self-reflexive impotency, and Loach's neorealism, which once seemed urgent, now seems limited.6/10 – "In the Valley of Elah" meets "Silver City" meets "Green Zone". Worth one viewing.

In contrast to the most successful war or Iraq war film this century so far..I remember going to see 'The Hurt Locker' with high hopes because I had been sold on the hype, it had a female director tipped to win awards and I really liked what she(K.Bigalow) did years before with 'Point Break' a fun(and sometimes funny for the wrong reasons) crime caper.After the credits rolled I was in two minds(similar to when I first saw 'Point Break') because I appreciated the technical aspects of the film but something seemed to be missing... My big problem became clear when I overheard people talking on the way out. In particular, I heard two teenagers summary comments to each other, that it was 'pretty good','a bit of fun' and 'there were some really good special effects and action sequences' which to me, is a summary of what most people said to me to date about the film. No one seemed to care that they had for the purpose of entertainment just sat, popcorn in hand, and watched a film about a war that was still ongoing outside the cinema(albeit five thousand miles away) at the same time...So, I left the cinema feeling like Walt Disney had final cut on the production and it was financed by Haliburton and McDonalds etc. I was in a state of mild mental shock... Sickened, disgusted and annoyed with the world, to be more precise... Anyway, I am generally interested in 'facts' and the 'details' of what is going on around me and why things happen the way they do. Cinema for me is not about entertainment. Going to the 'movies' to be entertained, escapism etc. is fine. I do it but it's a different experience. If I go to see a film about a current war I would expect it to say something meaningful. So for me, the Hurt Locker is the benchmark epitome of total bullshit filmmaking in the 21st century and so offensive(even just in it's inception alone) on so many levels that I really wouldn't know where to start or finish for fear of ranting into oblivion...Anyway, I have seen many documentaries, read many articles watched endless news footage, reports and interviews on the current War(S) in the middle east and I'm still not 100% sure what is actually going on.One thing that I do know for sure though, is that all other feature length films related to the Iraq War in the past decade(apart from a few documentaries) portray the allied forces as the victims and all are dedicated to their military forces... WTF is that all about...?Everything in the 'Route Irish' story by K.Loach, although fictional with use of some artistic license, has happened in real life!... It will also continue to happen again as a matter of fact...If you want escapism and have to be entertained all the time then you know where to go for your fix.Some people are still rolling out the same old polemic argument about Loach/'Route Irish' that he/the film is lefty, over-long, boring, preachy, flawed in acting,writing,direction and it sometimes looks like it was made for 50 quid. etc. etc. ...But we must appreciate him, social justice, national treasure etc. etc. BLAH BLAH BLAH....Trust me, the film is not perfect by any means but see it for yourself because those people are idiots...-If you are one of them you can stick it in your Hurt Locker...:PDubman.The '...unique angle*' being the people who are the real victims and the people who are really responsible..._______________________ 'Cold Hard Reality is always so boring and difficult to watch.....' -Another complete idiot.

Many movies are political but just a few directors are as consciously political film-maker like Ken Loach. This work hasn't got a clear left-wing agenda like others but it's his point on the Iraki war and handles subjects discussed upon many occasions, such as the exploitation of the unemployed and war crimes. Aside from the original (in Loach's films) issue, Route Irish is a characteristic production of this director and has many grim sequences. There are also very good acting performances that keep pace with the progress of the story. The conclusion is shocking but on the whole the film is a didactic and angry thriller, in the typical style of the social realist Loach.

A timely and hard hitting film about the Iraq conflict from the great Ken Loach and written by his long time colleague, Paul Laverty which deals mostly with the role of private security firms (mercenaries working for the various western governments) and their lawless actions out there in a conspiracy thriller with a very real edge that also shows the pressures on soldiers in civilian life to conform to normality when leaving a war zone. Using relatively unknown actors with Mark Womack starring and John Bishop (the comedian, surprisingly good) and Andrea Lowe co-starring, it is in this that a few flaws are shown as there is a couple of scenes which really don't look too convincing in my opinion but oblivious to this, it is still a very real feeling film for me in representing Womack as a troubled ex-SAS soldier who is working as a security soldier (merc) with his best friend joining him in Iraq for the big pay and Womacks relationship after the death with Bishops girlfriend (here in lies some great acting between Womack and Andrea Lowe). What transpires from the start is Womack not making a flight for a job due to a fight in Liverpool and Bishop getting killed in a manner which seems suspicious to him and from here you get a great 'who dun-nit' style thriller which doesn't pull it's punches in some of it's scenes in dealing with the guilty parties but also a good message and insight into what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan with the rise of private armies working for various corporations that are aligned with our governments and also some of the atrocities which happen on a regular basis that are swept under the carpet. Not in the league of 'the wind that shakes the barley' or 'my name is Joe' but still a entertaining thriller with a good message.