A middle aged carpenter, who requires state welfare after injuring himself, is joined by a single mother in a similar scenario.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.5/10
IMDb: 7.8/10
Letterboxd: 4.04/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 78
TMDB: 7.7/10
Director
Ken Loach
Production
Sixteen Films, Why Not Productions, Wild Bunch, BBC Film, Les Films du Fleuve, France 2 Cinéma
Cast
Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Briana Shann, Dylan McKiernan, Kate Rutter, Sharon Percy, Kema Sikazwe, Magpie Richens, Amanda Payne, Chris McGlade, Shaun Prendergast, Gavin Webster, Sammy T. Dobson, Mickey Hutton, Colin Coombs, David Murray, Stephen Clegg, Andy Kidd, Kay Gilchrist-Ward, Dan Li
Where to watch
fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, AMC+, Philo, Sundance Now
Curator Review
Verdict
A devastating, humane social-realist drama that turns welfare bureaucracy into a moral emergency. It’s emotionally direct, politically angry, and anchored by performances that make the indignities feel painfully specific rather than abstract.
Best for
Viewers who like grounded social realism
Fans of angry but compassionate political dramas
People interested in class, welfare, and institutional failure
Audiences who don’t mind a bleak, tearful watch
Skip if
You want escapism or a lighter tone
You’re sensitive to bureaucratic cruelty and prolonged frustration
You prefer stylized filmmaking over plainspoken realism
You’re looking for a plot driven by twists rather than lived-in observation
Overview
Ken Loach strips away ornament and leaves the human cost of policy on full display. The film’s power comes from its refusal to soften the process: forms, phone calls, appointments, and small humiliations become a system of violence. It is angry, but never abstract; every indignity lands because the characters feel so ordinary and so vulnerable.
Worth noting
Dave Johns gives Daniel a stubborn decency that keeps the film from tipping into pure despair, while Hayley Squires brings fierce, exhausted energy to Katie. Their bond gives the story its emotional center, and Loach uses that connection to argue for solidarity as a practical necessity, not a slogan.
Bottom line
This is not an easy watch, but it is an essential one if you value cinema that confronts social reality head-on. The film’s plain style is part of its force: it doesn’t ask to be admired so much as witnessed, and the result is bruising, compassionate, and hard to forget.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 (5★) · 1384 likes
A disability advice centre, three jobcentres, A charity helping ex offenders find employment and get straight on their release, two local initiatives that helped people from all backgrounds into employment and education.
These are just some of the places I've worked at that involve helping people into work, getting people 'job ready' or dealing with people's benefit claims.
Jobseekers allowance, Incapacity benefit, Employment and Support allowance, Carers allowance.
These are just some of the benefits I've claimed since (and between)… more
Marian (4★) · 1056 likes
them: fuck the state
me (wiping away tears): same
Jeremy Corbyn (5★) · 936 likes
Government ministers should watch this film to understand the human cost of welfare cuts. Well done Ken for this moving masterpiece.
Jane Firehorse (4.5★) · 517 likes
This is what Kafka was always on about - literally, all the time - but while he chose to relay his message through surrealism, allowing his readers aesthetic distance, Ken Loach cuts straight to the core of the real - and in so doing, he breaks our hearts, again and again.
I can't recall the last film in which I teared up so spontaneously and repeatedly. Our hero (and he is that, in the truest sense of the word), Daniel… more
Eli Hayes (5★) · 420 likes
For the majority of its runtime, it's something along the lines of this year's The Measure of a Man, but even starker and even stronger -- much stronger actually (coming from someone who quite likes TMoaM), and no comparisons could do this film justice. For me, Ken Loach's best film since Sweet Sixteen (which I thought was his best film since Kes), and maybe his best film in general. Cried, and cried, and cried my eyes out. No idea what to do with myself right now.