Sorry We Missed You review, HeyUGuys
Since the sixties, the no-nonsense director Ken Loach has been the face of British social-realist cinema. He captures the grit of working-class life and opposes fake, romantic sentimentality. Sorry We Missed You — Loach’s latest and maybe last film about the troubling realities of the gig economy — encapsulates the blunt, slice-of-life structure that makes the director so appealing. He ignores artifice where many would pile it on; he rarely raises the music during emotional scenes; he doesn’t force close-ups of teary-eyed actors. The feelings felt in Sorry We Missed You rise in reaction to the bare bones of a horrific situation.
Like Loach’s previous Cannes-winning drama I, Daniel Blake, which captured the realities of the British benefits system, Sorry We Missed You gradually sinks into a cesspool of real-life despair. Ricky (Kris Hitchen) opens the film, interviewing for a driving job at a van depot in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, rattling off every job he’s had. He sits opposite the manager, Gavin (Ross Brewster), who approaches his job like a bureaucratic fascist: proclaiming himself, proudly, as the ‘patron saint of nasty bastards’.
