Dirty Pretty Things
Directed by Stephen Frears
2003 UK 12A USA PG-13
Dirty Pretty Things
is an English movie about the dodgy London underworld.
The crime portrayed in this thriller does not
involve drugs, and only casually touches upon
prostitution. Illegal immigration into England is one aspect
of the crime trade, and, unsurprisingly, the filmmakers
treat the illegal immigrants sympathetically.
The media's and politicians' sympathy for illegal
immigrants (sorry, asylum seekers as the PC
phrase puts it) is at odds with the general
public outrage that, for better or for worse,
is down to the fact that most "asylum seekers"
are no such thing, they are illegal economic
migrants that are an exponentially increasing
cause of crime, falling education standards,
poverty and, especially in the case of a small
but dangerous minority of muslim "asylum seekers":
terrorism.
The lead in
Dirty Pretty Things is a Nigerian in exile from his own country. It made a pleasant change to see a black character protagonist portrayed as a caring professional with a love of chess rather than an egotistical, bad-ass, wise-cracking hip-hop clown like Will Smith. Chiwetel Ejiofor holds the movie well as the struggling Okwe.
The leading lady is Audrey Tautou, of Amalie. She was tone-perfect in that movie, but perhaps the idea in
Dirty Pretty Things was to shake off the Amalie image, for here she is different, but for the wrong reasons: she seemed lost in space. Her performance was stiflingly self-conscious and few of the scenes she was in worked. There was no chemistry between the two leads. Whilst her character was an emotionally suppressed muslim, she merely came over as stiff. When (extreme) things happened to her, I was not moved, I did not feel her pain, which, given the magnitude of the torment, was rather shocking in itself. I can't put my finger on whether this was chiefly down to lousy acting, directing, casting or an equal combination of those. (The exception was with Tautou's scene with the whore in the bathroom in which a fleeting flash of humanity and spontaneity lit up the screen). When she is advised that if she lives the role then she will not be suspected, she (the actress and the director, not the character) should have scribbled down notes.
Dirty Pretty Things has some suspense, but this was not cranked up enough, and this movie is particularly unconvincing but then again unconvincing things do happen where people are desperate.
Fortunately the lead was very watchable and the slightly hammy supporting actors: the bad guy, the porter and the mortuary technician make the movie breeze along nicely. The comic relief was handled in an underused way in these attention Deficiency Disordered days, through sly wit, not buffoonery. One of many great sentiments was that if you are good at chess, you are bad at life. A cliché, but a tasteful one! (Mind you, yours truly is lousy at both).
All in all,
Dirty Pretty Things has just enough to make it interesting, if not plausible. This movie is doing something right: most of the time I felt uncomfortable watching the machinations of the poor: a voyeuristic guilt I suppose. It makes a change from sitting through crap about the glamorous and the rich. Whereas the rich are too unworthy to have a heart,
Dirty Pretty Things is too busy being worthy to have a heart.
See spoilers corner
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| From: |
Sonagul | Subject: | 2003-09-08 12:02:05 |
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Geoff Bishop | Subject: | 2003-09-14 11:41:21 |
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