Dirty Pretty Things

Having enjoyed watching Audrey Tautou in "Amelie," I decided to give this a look. I've done that in several other of her films since then, too, and always with the same result: the films stink. I guess she peaked with "Amelie." Like others, I also got suckered in on the reviews which said this was "a sensational thriller.....gripping suspense." Yeah, right. I never pay attention to that nonsense anymore. Movies like this taught me to disregard any "hype." Folks, this is very little suspense in this film. I kept waiting and waiting for it. The only thing that kept me interested were Audrey's big beautiful eyes and Chiwtel Ejiofor's interesting character "Okwe." It's not a bad film; just not as good as advertised which makes the viewer disappointed. An interesting twist in this film was having people of "color" playing Caucasian roles. Wow, that's a switch from the old classic-era days. It also was Tautou's first English-speaking role, and she was fine with that. (She's French.) The story is simply of how Britain blackmailed some immigrants into donating body parts, such as a kidney, to give them status so they wouldn't be deported. I agree: if that really happened, it's outrageous. Overall, I would rate it as "fair," and maybe give it a sixth star for the nice colors in here and the fact that it's also low on profanity. You could do a whole lot worse but just don't expect a suspenseful film, either.

Im from turkey. And I know turkish people and I'm sure that this film dont know anything about turkish people we are not arabic or african such a rubbish film

Organ trafficking is the central theme of this overlooked great movie by Stephen Frears which received little noise when it came back in theatres in 2003 but managed to receive an Oscar nod for Original Screenplay. While this might not sound like the stuff that makes movies, Frears creates a visually effective thriller about the constant state of anxiety and exploitation in which immigrants with no papers must go through in order to survive. This is the reality as seen through the eyes of Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Senay (Audrey Tatou) who work in a seedy hotel under the smarmy and vaguely psychotic supervision of appropriately named Sneaky (Sergi Lopez). Both are in constant fear of being discovered by immigration agents who pop up at the most inopportune moments, and to top this all, it seems the hotel where they work in is being the focus of something quite dirty; when Okwe makes a grisly discovery in a toilet after a call girl (recently Oscar-nominated Sophie Okonedo), he is blackmailed into participating in the illegal plot he uncovers, which later threatens to overcome Senay as she succumbs to the pressure of legalizing her papers. Nice pacing, occasional dark humor brought in from time to time, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS never goes overboard with flashy chase sequences or explosions or implausible villains, but benefits from a grimier yet equally intense approach that conveys its message of the helplessness marginalized immigrants feel in a foreign country, compounded by the determination to survive at all costs, even when the situation seems grim.

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 * 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.

Stephen Frears has once again given viewers a fascinating look at characters that seem to live in societies cracks and its underbelly. This film is about an illegal immigrant from Nigeria named Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who drives a minicab part time and also works the front desk at a hotel. He sleeps on the couch of another illegal immigrant who works as a chambermaid. Her name is Senay (Audrey Tautou) who is Turkish and secretly in love with Okwe and they both have to be careful of immigration officials. The night manager at the hotel is Sneaky (Sergi Lopez) and he is involved in vile schemes behind the doors of the hotel. One night Okwe is checking a stopped up toilet in a room and he finds it clogged with a human heart. He asks some questions but Sneaky tells him to mind his own business. Immigration officials are tracking Senay and she finds another job at a sweat factory sewing but the owner of that business makes her give sexual pleasures in order for her to keep her job. Okwe talks to his Asian friend Guo Yi (Benedict Wong) who works at the hospital morgue about the heart and he tells him that many illegal immigrants give up their kidneys in exchange for citizenship. Its then that he figures out Sneaky is behind these illegal operations but Okwe cannot tell anyone in fear of being deported. Senay dreams of going to New York and makes a deal with Sneaky about giving him her kidney. Okwe was a surgeon in Nigeria and asks Sneaky that in exchange for two passports he will perform the operation. Stephen Frears has again directed a film with characters that are on the fringe of normal society. This is a carefully detailed script and each one of these characters is well written. One of the interesting things about this film is that each character is of a different nationality. Sneaky is a Spaniard, Yi is Asian, The doorman is Russian, Okwe is Nigerian and Senay is Turkish. Each of them have jobs that most of us would not want. But Frears wants us to realize what people perform these tasks and how difficult it is to do some of these jobs and stay true to their morals and beliefs. This is a fascinating character study of a bunch of people that a lot of us take for granted. The characters are all so well written and we have come to expect this from Frears. Okwe was a surgeon and exiled out of Nigeria and he is haunted by his past. Senay is a virgin but in love with Okwe and she wants to go be with her sister and not be like her mother, Yi understands Asian customs and when he gets an Asian body he makes sure it is prepared correctly for their religious service. Beautifully detailed script paints a riveting look at immigrants who do what they have to in order to survive. It's not a pretty picture but Frears usually doesn't direct pretty films. Along with "The Grifters" this is arguably his best film. Although I wouldn't call it a mystery, it does work on that level. What I would call it though is a carefully detailed character study. The performances are all exceptional and Ejiofor is the centerpiece of the film. He shows he can carry a film and definitely has screen presence. I think this is an important role for Tautou who was probably bombarded with scripts for romantic comedies following the huge success of "Amelie". She wanted to show that she's capable of a lot more than that and this was definitely an excellent step in that direction. She's very good in this film. And Lopez gives us a villain that you will not easily forget. He's not some high profile gangster type with henchmen to help him. He's just a night manager at a seedy hotel but with the power to turn them all in to immigration if they don't follow his orders. Some have said that this is Stephen Frears masterpiece. After thinking about it, who's to argue?

Apart from being shot like a TV drama, the story was ridiculous and all the characters apart from Okwe are flat and 1-dimensional, both in terms of script development and acting. I live in a part of London where if I walk down the street and hear someone speak English I turn my head in surprised. I have immigrant neighbours from Africa, Turkey and Eastern Europe. None of them act like the characters in this film. Frears very rarely creates any live atmosphere in this film. And some of the decisions in the story-making process are just plain stupid and wrong. The mistake is that on the one hand we are given the feeling this is a serious drama dealing with very real and heartbreaking immigration issues. But on the other, the story is so ridiculous, particularly the final twist, that you can't take it seriously. Typical of British film-making, this movie is caught between being entertaining and delivering some kind of social message. It does neither. I'm not surprised that most of the other reviews are written by Brits. It is obvious that Brits know nothing about movies. No wonder we can't make a decent one.

This movie is immoral: its climax is a revenge because Sneaky could "take" Senay before Okwe could make love to her. The taking of the kidneys of Sneaky is horrible and morally completely unjustified. The end with Okwe weeping is a weak and sentimental anticlimax. The ways illegal immigrants steal and fraud the passports is unacceptable to be defended as a story in a movie. The way the immigration inspection is depicted is laughable and cannot be taken for serious at all. This movie is seriously suffering from the intention of the director to deliver a message which is not reaching its goal because of the immoral undertone of the entire movie. One should be disgusted by the way some people try to undermine the immigration system. The result is clear: poverty, slums and bad housing and people doing everything to stay in London where they continue their life in depravation and solitude.

`Dirty Pretty Things' is a thriller interrupted by a love story. The immigrant Brit working class is sometimes depicted by this film's director Stephen Frears (`My Beautiful Laundrette'); the native Brits are often championed by Mike Leigh (`Secrets and Lies'). In both cases, the kitchen sink realism does not fail to wake up middle-class Anglophiles like me. Nigerian doctor Okwe hides in London behind 2 jobs as cabbie and night porter. He lives with, but does not sleep with, Turkish chambermaid Senay (played by `Amelie's' Audrey Tautou). Though they both hide from immigration officials, they cannot hide from their love. Okwe remains loyal to his Nigerian wife and daughter, and Senay has enough surviving to do to keep herself from Okwe. After he finds a human heart in a hotel room, his own heart is changed forever. He becomes aware of low-life trafficking in organs and aware that as a doctor he could relieve many pains by helping the transplant operations. When the bloody business hits home, Frears lets us suffer with Okwe while he decides if his conventional morality can adjust to the underworld's impossible demands. The decision is not easy because his boss, Sneaky (the talented Sergi Lopez from `With a Friend like Harry'), regales him with the sophistry that crime like this is good for everyone involved (for instance, a doctor performing an operation rather than letting a hack do damage). My worldly-wise companion and I debated Okwe's dilemma without a firm conclusion about the ethics of this end justifying the means. Frears caught us in the middle-class complacency of professionals who easily trip to London not even thinking about the workers who will attend to us--those shadow people we will never see, the disenfranchised a heartbeat away from jail or deportation. As for their love lives, who has time? The screenwriter, Steven Knight, created the original Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? `Dirty' is leagues away from that fantasy game show, but then again the immigrants of this film are just as much moved by the slim chance of finding a home somewhere in the world. It's the love story between Okwe and Senay that entrances me. I can't remember when I was so pleased by seeing the power of mutual respect turning into love and impossibility as I have been here. Of course, the consummate acting is a big help (You'll completely forget airhead Amelie when you see Tautou out of Paris and in the streets of London). `Dirty Pretty Things' is an example of excellent filmmaking art without artifice.

... I have to be honest and say that before I sat down to watch, I hadn't given much thought to the subject, myself. Maybe it's the suburban boy in me. Often you don't notice the true depths of depravity to be found in most cities unless you actively go looking for it. This happens to be about the underbelly of London; and what practises are reputed to - and may or may not - go on there. In this particular treatment, such activities are allowed to continue because the people caught up in them aren't citizens. 'Developed' society prefers to deny them a workable route of admittance for many of their circumstances;, so the best attitude seems to be to ignore how they have to live until such time as they go away. Of course, the logical outcome of such a way of thinking is a marked increase in illegal/immoral activity; but somehow the people who wish to turn a blind eye can't understand that eventually the overall effects will begin to seep onto THEIR doorstep... You do indeed tend to reap what you sow. For those lucky enough to be ignorant of the sorts of happenings that take place on the streets, one can only say that this film is an eye-opener. Too often we walk around blind to the foreign nationals who do a lot of our menial jobs for us. It's not expected that we take notice of our cab drivers, chamber-maids, and yes; even our sex-slaves. Pity we don't pay more attention, because that often isn't ALL they do; and the burden of truth should heap shame on civilisation as a whole. These issues are handled brilliantly in "Dirty Pretty Things" by all of the creative team involved. See it to humble yourselves with this sobering reminder: The face you slap on your way up may belong to the same owner of the feet you're kissing at your lowest ebb.

If you want to feel on-side with all those unfortunates that serve your drinks, park your cars, cook your food etc. etc. then watch this film( fight club is so much better though!)!! It'll make you feel real good about yourself . . . . there is of course another side to illegals driving your mini-cab high on chat/shesha doing a double shift . . . they're not insured if they kill/injure you or anyone else on the road, and five women every two weeks on average get sexually assaulted in illegal mini cabs in London alone. why do I have an opinion on this? 6 years of security work in London has shown me what's real. this film's portrayal of this end of the life scale is romantic lefty crap. Get real.