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Poster (c) Miramax Films
Dramas are the hardest genre of movies to rate. You can rate a comedy based the number of times you laugh, or horror movies by how scary they are. But there’s not one definitive thing you can look at in dramas. It has to have a mix of acting and whether it achieves what it wants to accomplish. Dirty Pretty Things, by director Stephen Frears (High Fidelity) has both. Audrey Tautou, star of the feel-good Amèlie puts in an amazing job, but is shadowed by the work of Chiwetel Ejiofor. He’s simply outstanding.
Dirty Pretty Things is basically a more adult Fight Club. Both can be considered uprisings (although this one is less extreme) about people who are on a low rung of society. Both Tyler Durden and Okwe (Ejiofor) give similar speeches, too. Basically, the people who are low don’t deserve to be there. Okwe is a doctor, yet has to have two jobs. Senay (Tautou) is obviously more than her job is.
Okwe is an illegal Nigerian immigrant living in England. He works two jobs, one as a taxi driver (which we never see him do) and one as a hotel clerk (which we see him do often; much of the final part of the movie takes place there. However, since nobody can know he’s in the country, he often bunks with Senay. She has some sort of government program where she is funded by the government but cannot work. She does sneak out to work, though. Dirty Pretty Things has something that most movies now cannot do: have a strong platonic friendship between a man and a woman, without turning it into a love story. While looking in one of the rooms in the hotel, Okwe sees that a toilet is overflowing. It turns out that what’s clogging it is not what you’d expect. That leads Okwe and Senay into an underworld of London that neither of them wanted to be in.
What makes Dirty Pretty Things so great is the attention to detail of the characters. It’s rare these days to find a character that we not only know about, but also actually care about. I felt for these characters, these misfits. I couldn’t feel that way about Tyler Durden. Ejiofor gives such a subtle performance, it blew me away. Tautou also put in a very good job. Also, Sergi Lopez, as Okwe’s boss, puts in an amazing job as the sinister, evil boss. It seemed like it all came naturally to him, a little too much. If getting away from the Hollywood, mainstream films is what you want this summer, then your best bet is Dirty Pretty Things.
Rated R for sexual content, disturbing images and language.
Review Date: September 13, 2003