Sor­ry We Missed You – first look review

Some­thing is rot­ten in the north-east of Eng­land. A full decade on from the Great Reces­sion, ordi­nary work­ing-class folk like Ricky Turn­er (Kris Hitchen) are still feel­ing the pinch thanks to aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures enforced by suc­ces­sive Tory Prime Min­is­ters. The pro­tag­o­nist of Ken Loach’s lat­est scathing­ly bleak sur­vey of mod­ern Britain is a down-on-his-luck grafter who, like so many peo­ple stuck on zero-hours con­tracts, is find­ing it hard to make ends meet.

While Ricky’s wife Abby (Deb­bie Hon­ey­wood) enjoys her work as a car­er, he’s run­ning out of options as a worka­day handy­man. But Ricky has a plan. After per­suad­ing Abby to sell her car to pay for the deposit on a new van, he signs up to be a fran­chisee with a local deliv­ery firm. For the first time in his work­ing life Ricky appears to be in the dri­ving seat of his own des­tiny. He pow­ers around the city’s tow­er blocks and trad­ing estates, drop­ping off parcels to most­ly sat­is­fied cus­tomers – the only inci­dent of note being a pet­ty squab­ble with a dyed-in-the-wool Geordie who can’t resist hav­ing a pop at Ricky for sup­port­ing Man­ches­ter Utd.

But it’s not long before the wheels start to wob­ble. Ricky’s teenage son, Seb (Rhys Stone), has start­ed skip­ping school and play­ing up at home, and younger daugh­ter Liza Jane (Katie Proc­tor) is begin­ning to bear some of the emo­tion­al strain brought on by the family’s increas­ing­ly des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion. As ten­sions run high at home, motor­less Abby strug­gles to make her reg­u­lar appoint­ments while Ricky clash­es with his boss, Mal­oney (Ross Brew­ster), the self-pro­claimed Patron Saint of Bas­tards who in the film’s stand­out scene deliv­ers a cal­lous, obvi­ous­ly rehearsed speech that’s like David Brent on steroids.

Filmed on loca­tion in and around New­cas­tle upon Tyne, Sor­ry We Missed You sees Loach pick up pret­ty much where he left off two years ago with I, Daniel Blake, which saw the vet­er­an direc­tor scoop his sec­ond Palme d’Or two (this is his four­teenth nom­i­na­tion over­all): rail­ing against the cur­rent gov­ern­ment and face­less cor­po­ra­tions which have con­spired to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. It’s a pes­simistic, some might say deeply cyn­i­cal film, though the script by Loach’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Paul Laver­ty does offer a few faint glim­mers of hope.

For the most part, how­ev­er, Laver­ty approach­es this del­i­cate sub­ject with sledge­ham­mer sub­tle­ty. At the time of writ­ing, the spec­tre of Brex­it still looms large over the British pub­lic, and it looks more than like­ly that we will have a gen­er­al elec­tion with­in the next six months. As such, a film about a deep­en­ing nation­al cri­sis should feel urgent and shock­ing­ly rel­e­vant; it should gal­vanise its audi­ence into action or, at the very least, give them food for thought before they next enter a polling sta­tion. But its focus is too shal­low, its mode of sto­ry­telling too blunt-edged and soapy, to have the desired impact.

Regard­less of whether or not you share his social­ist agen­da, it’s easy to see why Loach remains such a staunch cham­pi­on of the work­ing class: he came of age as a film­mak­er in the late 1960s, a time of mas­sive social, cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal upheaval, yet it could be argued that the peo­ple he has put on screen through­out his career have nev­er had it so bad. The prob­lem, then, lies not with Loach’s mes­sage but the hack­neyed man­ner of its deliv­ery. British film may not be as rad­i­cal and politi­cised as it once was, but it needs a new voice. Loach lit the fire, now it’s time for some­one else to pick up the torch.