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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published: 23 October 2008

On the coastal scenes in Outlanders, which tells the story young Poles looking for work in England

‘Ghosts’ on the coast: Poles build new lives

OUTLANDERS - Directed by Dominic Lee
Certificate 15

THE hidden world of illegal work gangs has been well chronicled in Nick Broomfield’s excellent documentary, Ghosts, about the tragedy of the Chinese cockle pickers who were drowned in Morecambe Bay in 2004.
The theme was returned to by Ken Loach’s It’s A Free World. Outlanders covers similar ground. Perhaps it was made at the same time as these other, better-known productions. It talks of a London in the middle of a housing boom and a London where you could still smoke in pubs.
It is a fictionalised account of the plight facing illegal Polish workers lured here to help with the capital’s building boom.
We meet Adam (Jakub Tolak), the younger brother of former footballer turned gang master Jan (Przemyslaw Sadowski). When their father dies in the Polish port of Gdansk, he travels to England in the hope of finding his brother and starting a new life.
The family reunion soon turns sour when he realises Jan is exploiting fellow Poles by stealing their wages and holding on to their passports so they can’t flee, and running building sites with no regards for safety.
Things become complicated when a builder tumbles off scaffolding and Jan has to decide what to do: his actions lead to a split between the siblings.
There are strong performances from the two brothers, but this is sadly undermined by the rest of the cast. At times it feels like watching a Polish version of EastEnders.
Throw in a political diatribe by cop Dingwall (Shaun Cartwright) and it begins to feel as amateur as the building jobs they are rushing through.
The audience deserves to be credited with greater intelligence.
But some moments do work. Many of the landscapes are brilliantly grim. The mud flats of the Essex coastline, where small fishing boats bring in the next batch of joiners and plasters, help create the overall vileness of this trade, and will make you look at the glistening new homes and offices that sprung up in our city in the past five years with new eyes. You will not feel proud of London.
Other facets also add to this gloom: the cheap and creaking leather jackets worn by the two main protagonists, the grim pubs where deals are made, and the cash spent in the red-lit brothel-bars where the builders seek solace at the end of another horrible day.

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