Pacionsbo
Absolutely Fantastic
Limerculer
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Donald Seymour
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Guy
ROUTE IRISH is really angry and wants you to know all about it. Like all Ken Loach films it is about an oppressed Celt fighting the system. This time he's an ex-SAS and ex-PMC squaddie who refuses to accept the explanation offered by his former employers about how his best friend died in Iraq. After a cursory romance with his mate's gal, he quickly finds out that it's the corporate posh boys to blame again and so decides to go mental and take revenge. Although the trailers emphasise the action in Iraq, it's actually about the mental disintegration of an ex-soldier in Liverpool. Also, be warned that the Scouse accents are almost incomprehensible to non-Brits. Like most Loach films there's lots of excellent working class actors, gritty locations and a core of solid social drama. Sadly, like most Ken Loach films it is also absurdly partisan and preachy; his hero is almost schizophrenic in the way he switches from racial prejudice (soldiers as brutalised pawns of the elite) to loopy far- left ranting (which sounds like no soldier I've ever met) about the evils of the Iraq War. If Loach and his screenwriter Laverty could only get over their own prejudices then it would be a much better film.
rightwingisevil
This movie is excellent to certain degree that even the screenplay was not quite well scripted. The antiwar message was so strong and so true but still merely exposed tidbits of what happened after the invasion of Iraq sacredly titled "Battle for Iraq". "No Blood, No Foul" was just a basic motto for the international forces that joined the Crusade-like invasions to Iraq and Afghanistan under the name of Christian God and the beautified excuse to liberate the suppressed people in both countries. The whole endeavor is nothing but a conspired plot by the last guy who sat in the Oval Office and his Party peers on the Capital Hill, the Pentagon, and the Wall street, the Corporate America. "Killing one person that's murder, killing million that's conquer" , same as "A person who raid an ancient tomb is called a thief, a government digging up a ancient tomb is called archeology." There's no crime at all when a superpower country killing millions of other countries' people, because it's liberation; while small countries in civil wars killing tens of thousands is nothing but unforgivable inhumane genocide. I am forever confused. I am not quite sure why the guy got to kill himself in the end by jumping from the ferry. He should have married his dead best friend's wife and moved on.
rtaron
If you want a movie that will hold your attention and leave you feeling like you've watched a great movie, this is it. I am not a connoisseur of Ken Loach, or a movie snob, I just enjoy a movie that holds my attention.Unlike the other reviewers, I thought the characters were well-drawn and convincing. The effects used on the film itself such as graininess, washed out lomo effect, and darkness in the right places, makes this a pleasure to watch.The over-use of the f-bomb is a real factor. Men do talk exactly like that, but for a film less would have been more.The politics of the mercenary world are shown brilliantly and without any sense of preachiness or one-sidedness.Just an excellent movie.
missismiggins
What an utter pile of drivel.Ken Loach can be quite on the edge at times, love him or loathe him, whatever.This movie IS NOT KEN LOACH - he must have been out in some bar somewhere swigging ale when this was spat out.The acting is terrible, but can in some respects be forgiven because of the atrocious script, whoever wrote this drivel should have their hands cut off.Sorry, but this has to be one of the biggest let downs this year, I expected something interesting, all I got was boring boring "Stereotyped " Scousers who were portrayed as usual as THICK, trying to speak English as if they had all been to Cambridge! - It doesn't work Ken - That kind of crap went out in the 1980's along with your excuses - Margaret Thatcher! Not for me!
