Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Riff-Raff Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 5, 2014

Note: This film is currently available as part of the double feature 2 by Ken Loach: Riff-Raff / Raining Stones.

Despite a long career that has resulted in several prestigious awards (including this year’s Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival), Ken Loach continues to be oddly underappreciated and in fact largely unknown on this side of the pond. His class conscious social realism would seem to be a perfect fit in a nation noted for its supposed lack of “caste” strata, but Loach’s films have generally been consigned to the Art House circuit over here and have therefore perhaps not had the wider recognition they deserve. Those curious about Loach had a recent opportunity to experience one of his 1970s outings when Cohen Film Collection released Black Jack, and now Twilight Time has released a double feature of two relatively more recent films from Loach’s enduring oeuvre, 1991’s Riff-Raff and 1993’s Raining Stones, both dealing with disaffected lower class folks caught in the vagaries of less than desirable working conditions or in fact unemployment. Both films offer an unsurprisingly dour perspective on the disastrous British economy of that era, but as with most Loach films, there are glimmers of hope scattered throughout the ashes of these lives.

A pastor friend of mine who received his doctorate from Oxford once related a story one of the prelates of the English Methodist church once told him about a kneeling rail of sorts that Margaret Thatcher evidently paid to have installed in Wesley’s Chapel, considered the “mother church” of Methodism. Thatcher’s hardnosed policies toward the supposed “welfare state” had become infamous by the time she left office, and the high ranking church official joked with the pastor that the bannister, installed up near where parishioners would kneel during prayer, was one of the few times “Thatcher provided a hand up to those needing it.” It’s of course a deliberately cheeky commentary on the perception that Thatcher was a hard hearted plutocrat without much empathy for those lesser off, but it perhaps gives a bit of insight into Loach’s approach in Riff-Raff, a film which unapologetically ransacks the aftermath of the Thatcher years to provide an often harrowing portrait of a downtrodden ex-con trying to make a new life for himself in desperate economic circumstances.

The film centers on Scottish ex-con Stevie (Robert Carlyle, Trainspotting, The Full Monty), who finds camaraderie of a certain sort on a construction site where he's found work. All of the men on the crew have their own tales of woe to tell, but they bond together and even indulge in finding refuge in an abandoned flat, where their expertise with things like gas lines and electricity allow them to have at least a few creature comforts. A happenstance discovery by Stevie introduces him to young starry eyed Susan (Emer McCourt), a girl with potent dreams of hitting the big time with her singing but perhaps without the requisite talent to support such fantasizing. The two misfits start a faltering romance while Stevie and his buddies attempt to deal with shoddy work conditions at the construction site.

This is in a very real sense a kind of combination of British Angry Young Man tropes with a kitchen sink drama approach that requires a certain tolerance level. The downtrodden air that suffuses this film is not always easy to swallow, and in fact when Loach engages in two kind of capricious flights of comedic fancy toward the end of the film, it feels tonally at least a little odd, if not completely out of place. That off kilter feeling is only amplified by a tragedy that follows and a literally combustible finale that seems to sum up the incipient rage of a working class kept from ever even approaching, let alone grasping, a brass ring. Performances are very believable and lived in here, but the depressive emotional aspect may simply be too burdensome for those who prefer noble proletariat types to prosper.

Riff-Raff Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Riff-Raff is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. Shot on 16mm, the results here are mostly true to the source, but come with some inherent issues and other areas of admittedly slight concern. The image here is soft and extremely grainy, as should be expected from the smaller millimeter format, but colors also aren't especially vivid, with flesh tones often leaning toward pale pink. Contrast is slightly inconsistent, looking quite good in some brightly lit outdoor scenes, but at times appearing murky in shaded interior environments. The excess grain doesn't quite resolve naturally some of the time, clumping into splotches that occasionally have a yellow tinge to them. Given reasonable expectations of the inherently lo-fi ambience of Riff-Raff, this is a solid if unspectacular looking transfer.

Riff-Raff Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While Riff-Raff's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track has no inherent issues in terms of fidelity or damage to worry about, it's still going to be problematic for some listeners due to the very heavy accents of almost all the major characters, whether that be Stevie's brogue or the thick Cockney patois of most of the other construction workers. Everything is more or less clear given the context of any given scene, but this is certainly one release that could have benefited substantially from subtitles.

Riff-Raff Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Isolated Score and Effects Track Is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio Mono.

Riff-Raff Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Perhaps too relentlessly depressive to really connect fully with people who want "entertainment" from their films, Riff-Raff is still a compelling character study and is a scathing indictment of the shallowness of some of Thatcher's economic policies. Carlyle is fantastic in this piece, and fans of the actor will no doubt want to check out this early starring performance. Technical merits here are good if not perfect, and Riff-Raff comes Recommended.