British director Ken Loach (Riff-Raff) offers another gritty slice of underclass life with this story of a Scottish teenager caught between his jailed mom and her
drug-dealing boyfriend. Martin Compston makes the movie with his fearless lead performance as a no-good kid who is doing his best not to do worse. The movie’s predictability – and the overwrought ending it demands – may carry a whiff of contrivance, but in Compston’s performance, Loach has once again found a way to make a ragged life riveting.
