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By
DEBORAH NICOL
From all of the possible
manifestations of Hell, writer Steven Knight
apparently agrees with the Coen brothers that
Hades resides in a hotel. Stephen Frears ("High
Fidelity," "My Beautiful Laundrette") directs
Knight's tale of undesirable situations, focusing
on the illegal immigrants forced to perform
tirelessly in order maintain their bare existence
in London.
Chiwetel Ejiofor portrays Nigerian doctor Okwe,
forced to flee his homeland only to find an
endless nightmare of nonstop work in London.
Ejiofor smoothly expresses his character's
frustration in being a highly skilled and educated
man, living sleeplessly as a taxi cab driver and
bell boy. His only occasional rest is found on the
couch of fellow illegal immigrant Senay, played
with cautious suspicion by "Amélie's" Audrey
Tautou. Her fragile dreams of freedom are held
together by the occasional New York City postcard
sent by her cousin. Their frazzled lives become
thrown into further upheaval when Okwe discovers a
human heart at the bottom of a toilet in the hotel
where they are both employed.
Delving into the seedy underbelly of a world where
organs are removed voluntarily in exchange for the
possibility of a better life, the question must be
raised as to how awful life could be for one to
decide to shorten it with such fleeting hope.
Concurrently, at what point are human lives
exchanged so carelessly that a beer cooler of
fresh organs merely represents another stack of
cash to the manipulator in charge of such an
operation. These are the questions Frears' movie
weighs upon, and the gritty, florescent-lighting
vision of this underworld helps to flesh out the
desperate answers.
DVD extras include commentary by the director, a
short behind the scenes featurette, and previews
for other Miramax films. |
