Sorry We Missed You

“I know it’s gonna be tough at the start,” ex-laborer Ricky tells his wife, Abby, when he signs on as a franchisee driver for a Newcastle delivery company. The fact is, it will never be anything but tough. The latest working-class chronicle from Ken Loach (Kes; Riff-Raff; I, Daniel Blake) is a wrenching melodrama of life on the losing end of the gig economy. It unfolds in a series of sharply observed vignettes from the daily struggles of Ricky, less driver than driven; Abby, a home-care attendant torn between the needs of her clients and her own family; their preteen daughter, burdened with worries beyond her years; and their teen son, creative but headed for trouble. With empathetic performances and a pointed script by longtime Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, the film is both a tender portrait of a family under pressure and a scathing treatise on a system where “ownership” equals endless debt and “freedom” too often becomes free fall.