A reasonably involving, decent drama, but obviously Ken Loach's main concern it to unable us to have a clearer idea of what is really going on with our 'brave new world', globalization, we all need to work harder to compete, people in China need to work harder, everyone needs to work harder, and out of this sinister scam, unending progress etc. there is still half a billion people on planet hearth who don't have enough to eat and a few people filling their pockets. What we get from the media is selective snippets of information and outright lies, while none of this bunch of mercenary hacks would even dream of questioning the soundness of the oligarchic plutocratic system we call democracy! So I guess Ken is right, we need educating! And what better way to do that that to show us how the whole thing works in practice, the smaller wheels, the larger ones, the cogs. The people traffickers in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the people mercilessly exploiting illegal emigrants in this country. The protagonist is a working class, down-on- her-luck, single mother. She, together with her flatmate and friend, uses her previous working experience to create a small but profitable working agency for illegal emigrants. She is just a troubled person, she's worried about social services taking her son away. She thinks she deserves credit, because instead of living on the dole (welfare), she's trying to crate a business, to 'make something of herself'. Just another little well meaning cog then! The voice of reason is represented by her working class father, who, without being idealogical and in a down to earth way tries to explain to his daughter what it is really going on: 'entire country being deprived of their teachers and doctors coming to this country to work as plumbers and builders, the only people to profit from this scam is big business!' Keep educating us Ken, because we badly need it!
Review of It's a Free World...
