CINEMA: The Outlanders

Is blood thicker than one’s moral conscience? So it seems in this bleak, rather downbeat look at the illegal immigrant’s lot in modern Britain.

On the death of his father in Poland, Adam (Jakub Tolak) comes to London in search of his adored older brother Jan (Przemyslaw Sadowski). He soon finds him living the good life having set himself up as the gang master for illegal immigrant labourers on the capital’s building sites. Adam doesn’t like what Jan does, but decides to start working for the ‘firm’. That is, until a labourer is killed on site and he must choose between the ties of blood and family, what his conscience tells him is the right thing to do, and his love for Anna (Alexis Raben), the beautiful Russian girl who has become his only friend in the city.

Although this is a beautifully realised film with some outstanding performances, its subject matter is so unrelentingly depressing and gloomy you’ll leave the cinema feeling deflated and disenchanted with humanity.      Dee Pilgrim