• Fifty years after Loach’s career defining Kes, he’s still at it, refusing to go silently into that good night.
  • Sorry We Missed You makes for a good companion of 2016’s I, Daniel Blake as well. These are good men, good women, trapped like a mouse in a maze or a fly in a financial spider web. This is an angry film- political, social realism. Here Loach takes on the gig economy, Amazon/courier, employee vs. contractor myth of freedom and self-employment. These constructs serve as an invisible fence around Kris Hitchen’s Ricky and his family
  • There are little bouts of humor—but mostly this is one hardship after another for this working-class family and Loach is quick to point out the lack of progress as we near 2020. It isn’t subtle, Loach doesn’t want the message to be interpreted or missed “what happened to the eight-hour day?” and “there are no good jobs”. Still, it is a painful and heartbreaking story about the deconstruction of a family.
  • At one point after getting beat up (there is just an endless series of adversities), there is a three hour wait in the hospital- and you can feel Loach’s next big idea coming (if he hasn’t already covered it).
  • Powerful arguments and domestic fights between the cast- Hitchen mentioned previously Abbie (Debbie Honeywood), Seb (Rhys Stone) and Liza Jae (Katie Proctor). Still, Loach makes it clear that the economic strangle hold on this working-class family is the root evil.
  • The direction is pragmatic, unexceptional—the film works better in relation to Loach’s past thematic traits and larger body of work as an auteur
  • Recommend but not terribly close to the top 10 of 2019