The story of an Irishman who emigrates to Montreal in an effort to change his luck. Robert Shaw and Mary Ure both give extremely fine performances as immigrant husband and wife. As for direction, Sight and Sound noted aptly: “Kershner is uncompromising; he approaches the subject on a single, sombre key at the cost, one feels, of almost everything that would make it acceptable to an audience out for entertainment. He even dares to push the hard luck story into such well-tried situations as the one in which would-be public relations man Ginger Coffey, reduced to delivering nappies in order to support his schoolgirl daughter when his wife leaves him, is directed to the tradesman's entrance of a block of flats by the snobbish porter. But Coffey's final rejection of the one good post he's offered (with the diaper firm), on the strength of a reporter's job he hasn't got, is the hardest thing to take. It says much for Irvin Kershner's direction and more for Robert Shaw's performance that one doesn't disbelieve it entirely, that one vaguely realises its link with Coffey's persistent bonhomie towards a world forever frowning on him. In fact, the film's relentlessness finally makes sense, but even without that Kershner's obvious absorption in his subject is rare enough in the cinema to be worth cherishing.”