User Reviews

Ken Loach is known for his political/social films. This one is no different. The story of the consequences of the privation of British Rail is told through the eyes of the simple workers. They are the one who suffer the most from it. Loach is very sympathetic to them and doesn't hide it. In his opinion they are the "good guys". He tells their story with humor which draw us to their side. There is nothing wrong about that because he is right, they are the good guys.

Loach is also cleverly draw the impact privation have on the safety matters in this case and the unnecessary death it brings. As usual Loach uses a lot of non-professional actors and they do a very good job and we feel very close to them because they seem real and the problems they are facing seem also real.

This is a good film. No fireworks here, but a solid piece of work. The ending is a bit of disappointment, because it hangs in the air with no conclusion. And sometime all we need is a solid film. Just go and see it.

Saying frankly, I did not enjoy, nor being moved by the movie. The story is neither dramatic nor exciting. The lead character is not well defined and thus easy to confuse the audience. After watching it, being little bit disappointed, I went out to walk my dog, but the movie occupied my thought even after I came home. This is a story in railway workers in the UK, however I could see similar situation in Japan too. In Japan, many companies are gradually recovering from serious downfall. But during the process of profit recovery, companies have replaced fixed-cost employees by variable cost contract workers. As a result, the lifetime employment system has collapsed, and the power of the unions, the members of which are employees only, have been eroding. At the same time, number of contract workers, who do not have systematic training and skills building, has increased. In this trend the gap between peoples of high wages and low wages are becoming wider. British society has been many years the forerunner in the world of winning the rights of workers. But these rights are now too easily forgotten under the pressure of global economy. This is a social crisis in longer term. At least this movie has succeeded to portray this crisis.

I was lucky to see during the festival of Venice in Milan this very recent film from the good "social" director Ken Loach.

A group of friends in 1995 work in the Yorkshire for the ex-state owned: British Rail, which meanwhile has been completely fragmented in a tremendous number of small private companies that compete one against the other in order to be more competitive and gain the different bids. This situation leads the whole structure of each private company to a very profitable organisation offering a very poor service that has to save money from any single item of the fixed/variable costs structure of the economic statement.

Loach this time points out the lost of the social benefits of the labour class in a blackmail black and white situation where, if they want to get the job, they have to leave with these conditions which do not guarantee any type of social and physical safety to the worker.

It is not by chance that England has been the frame of several train accidents during the last years.

Unions are getting weaker and weaker and the so called "trouble makers" are led to leave the companies. The whole film is nicely viewed with some very fine, pretty uncommon in previous Loach's films, British humour. The scene where the supervisor has to read to the workers the message from the top management of productivity and their new rights is hilarious and superbly performed.

Rating: 6/10

England. Mid 1990's. British Rail has been privatised and broken up into separate companies with all work put out to tender with the lowest bidder getting the job. This film follows a group of workers in a Yorkshire depot as the culture gradually changes from a world of union influence into a competitive business world.

This is a very sobering film - it deals with the railtrack situation but is more generally about the selling out of the working man and the beginning of the culture that views people as commodities and expenses, just like the rolling stock and the rails. The film opens with the boss of the depot announcing that the company has been privatised and that things will begin to change. It then follows the culture change over the course of time and concludes with a depressingly innocuous exchange that represents the shattering of previously unified spirits.

The culture change beings with mission statements, competing with work and setting levels for "acceptable deaths and continues with an end to previous agreements and a range of different companies. It is very hard to watch without being angry at the treatment of previously proud men as they are reduced to being costs. Workers are offered voluntary redundancy and those that refuse are gradually forced out. Bosses and chief execs identify those workers that have union ties and work to push them out. Workers are encouraged to join temp agencies at higher wages but without benefits or a steady work load thus saving the company money. Those that make trouble with the crews by insisting on safe working conditions etc are blackballed by the agencies and no more work is put their way. The pressure to cut costs to win jobs continues until unskilled workers are used for rail maintenance because they are paid cash in hand while other crews are forced to use "cost-effective" methods to work without a lookout and run the risk of severe accidents.

For those who think that the experiences of the workers are exaggerated for effect, Ken Loach received regular visits from railtrack workers (taking holidays or sick days) to advise on the film to make sure that it was representative of their experiences - they couldn't officially do it as they feared being blacklisted within the company. These things do go on - the rail companies are led by bosses who get huge bonuses from the shareholders as they drive down operating costs by compromising safety and reducing the workforce costs.

If the film has a major flaw it is the one-sided nature of the script. Workers are all represented as jovial, hardworking types, you know - salt of the earth, put down by bosses who only care about money. The latter may well be true but the way the workers constantly joke etc makes them look too good and the film has far too much sympathy for them for it's own good. Even when a group of workers do something completely abhorrent (the end of the film) it is presented as something that they had no choice about whereas really they should have carried some of the blame.

This film was released in Europe but only had a limited release in the UK as it was screened first on TV. It came shortly after the collapse of Railtrack as the Government put it into administration. It was screened days after the Government tried to cover up a report of failing train performances etc and it was screened as inquiries continue into serious derailments with significant loss of life.

In the UK one major accident killed many passengers and was put down to badly maintained rails. The Chief Exec has thus far escaped charges of manslaughter (despite the findings of the Health & Safety Executive) and also left his job with his huge contractually-obliged bonus, before moving on to another job on another board. For those who think that this film is exaggerated you truly have no idea what's going on in the world of big business.

As the Government continue plans for part privatisation of the London Underground and have further plans to privatise air traffic control this film is a very scary thing. Once we forget the people who make up workforces that only leave numbers. When shareholders become more important than the public and the workers then costs are all that matters and all corners are cut to boost the share price.

This film has it's flaws and will not change Government policy one bit. But this is a very sobering film that will open you eyes to what is done to satisfy shareholders and earn bonuses for upper management.

I've read some trash about this film, so let me make this clear, this is not a Hollywood blockbuster, but someones experience of working when British Rail became privatised. If your adverse to being challenged politically then please don't bother with this, and worse of all don't watch it as the pretext for later writing nonsense about the eighties or Thatcher.

The film doesn't have a strong plot, and some of the characters could have been fleshed out but it is an honest reflection of what happens when working people are told to 'modernise' and there's few films or even directors like Loach who even bother with stories ordinary people have to tell.

The Navigators (2001) is an English film directed by Ken Loach. (The title refers to railroad workers who are referred to as "navvies." Originally, the term was "navigators." Loach has utilized the older word for effect.)

British Railways was a nationalized company. Little by little it was broken up into private companies, and, as often happens, the workers get the short end of the stick.

We watch as the workers respond with disbelief that agreements that had been worked out over the years are ignored. In fact, one of the upper-level executives tells a lower-level executive, "there are no agreements."

The cover of the DVD has quotes, "Fierce, funny and poignant." "A funny and compassionate story." For the record, it's fierce, poignant, and compassionate. It's not funny. It's a dark movie about a dark time.

The movie worked well on the small screen. Note that the film is set in Yorkshire. The Yorkshire accent was hard to understand. (The managers speak in BBC English. They are thugs with suits and briefcases, but it's easy to understand them.)

This is a hard movie to watch, because it's grim, and, I believe, it represents a sad reality. It has an IMDb rating of 7.0. I agreed and rated it 7.

As always, a social issue is beautifully intertwined with personal drama: sad, funny, true like life itself. And cinema itself. It's a relief to see someone can entertain and move us in this way, that's definitely not the present-day Hollywood way. On the other hand, Loach's career is brilliant from beginning to end with the only possible exception of Carla's Song that I consider a faux-pas. Like all great artists, Loach with this films add something to our understanding of ourselves, and our present history. I supposed that you understood I liked it. Still it seems I've lost the best: the liverpuldian parley. In Italy unfortunately all these films come dubbed.

This is by no means a movie to be seen for pure entertainment,. This is a REALISTIC movie, so those looking for kicks stay away. Otherwise you will be so disappointed.

I like this movie so much, especially since is the type of movie Hollywood would NEVER make. It sharply portraits how bad working conditions have gotten over the years (which is something I have witnessed firsthand). Treating people like dirt and firing them without a reason have become an end it itself.

Watching this film takes you to the core of what's going on at most workplaces, which obviously won't delight those who think life is pretty, because it ain't. Put your feet on the ground and search for that beauty - you are not going to find it in the treatment workers are getting anywhere. This is the real world, people, whether we like it or not.

While seeing this movie, never did I feel I was in the cinema. I could relate to what the characters were going through.

Of course the movie has no happy end, but if it did would be unreal.

10/10.

THE NAVIGATORS is another excellent Ken Loach movie.

I had been putting off watching it because I thought it would be very gruelling and upsetting. I've been a fan of Ken Loach's movies for a long time but oftentimes I am not in the mood because I know I'll either cry or get upset (or both).

THE NAVIGATORS is different than his other films. It isn't a movie where you cry and have the feeling of being emotionally raked over the coals (just saw the haunting SWEET SIXTEEN and am still having the aftershocks from that one).

Anyway, THE NAVIGATORS is a movie that you watch and get angry. For anyone working in a globalized economy (i.e., almost everyone) the ideas behind the railworker's plight -- how absolutely screwed they are -- is nothing new. Yet I can't think of a movie that has illustrated this situation more clearly. It's actually shocking that there aren't more movies about how altered our working world has became. Possibly because this is such a current experience in the world today.

THE NAVIGATORS is a saga of working men, attractive, tough, garrulous, hard-working people who just want to work hard, make money, live their lives.

I recommend the movie highly.

Marvelous film set in South Yorkshire, using local actors and comedians, done not so much in a documentary style, but with a documentary feel, about a group of railroad track workers during the privatization of British Rail. The culture changing from one of unionized steady jobs, to one of freelancing with no health care or holidays and for the sake of economy, stretching security which leads to the death of one of the workers. This presumably low budget film, shot all on location, is gritty, real, and is a wonderful insight into the British working class and its humor. A real treasure.

The fact that the previous reviewer apparently had other problems on her mind at the time should not dissuade anyone from seeing this excellent example of Ken Loach's work.

This film was very underseen in the USA, though many consider it one of Loach's finest. As a traveler who has seen firsthand what privatization is doing to the UK transportation system, this film struck me as grittily authentic.

As with so many of his films, Loach chooses to address social ills by exploring their effects upon working class characters. But not every plot point has to do with the topic at hand, and that is why the films work well, because the narrative has a life of its own driven by these characters (most of them quite likable although flawed) that goes beyond its "message."

The subject is the dead of British rail. Just as "Fermeture des usines Renault à Vilvoorde", it describes the changes and the insecurity of the closing down of the old management and the changes with the new boss Gilchrist Engineering in South Yorkshire in 1995. This movie is based on the memories of railway-man Rob Dawber who wrote the script. The workers have now to work with unexperienced part-time workers. The working conditions are poor and this has its consequences on the quality of the work. The overtaking by a private company brings more profit but it has its side-effects. The workers are mostly real workers from Sheffield and you can hear it from their accent. The maintenance of the railways is very poor and the movie has a dark humor because the result is that some people die. The liberal industrial policy as a result of the Thatcher government means that the state has no longer the control on essential security matters. Good description of the family tragedy when some loose their jobs. Thomas Craig (Mick) and Joe Duttine (Paul) are good.

Ken Loach films are always worth watching, because his characters are so believeable. Mostly it feels like you're watching a documentary. That is because of the mostly fantastic acting.

"The Navigators" are about five railway workers, who after the privatisation of the British Rail are deformed in their class consciousness. It goes so far that they prefer to have one of them probably killed (while they are moving him) instead of getting their private rail company into trouble.

This is also about capitalistic lack of efficiency. The workers smash tools instead of selling them, ordered by their employers. Instead of getting concrete by train, they transport it in buckets, because that's the cheapest (but most slow) way.

Some people might say that Ken Loach is repeating himself. That's wrong, because he deals with people, who all are different, although they are workers. His message needs to be repeated too. Greed of the few is much more important than other peoples dignity and lives. And it doesn't matter that a "labour" party rules Britain.

The premise of the movie was interesting: job cuts and outsourcing at British Railways. This same situation is happening in the US and elsewhere around the world and working people are facing major economic hardships. The plot of this movie took a long time to get going. There were lots of redundant scenes that seemed designed just to fill-in time. When the plot finally got interesting with the accidental death of a railroad worker and his co-workers cover-up the accident to keep their jobs, the movie abruptly ends. It seems the producers ran out of money when making this film? This movie represents a lost opportunity to make a major statement on working conditions.

Although it contains some funny moments, this film is no comedy; rather it is a biting satire of the mess that resulted when the Conservative Government in the UK decided to split up and privatise British Rail in 1995 (one wonders why they didn't go all the way and do the same to the highways) as seen through the eyes of track workers. Perhaps the most ludicrous moment is when their supervisor in their newly created regional private company tells the workers to take equipment out to dump bins and smash it up because "it isn't up to scratch, we've got to have high standards now." "But it's perfectly good, can't we sell it?" they protest. "What, sell it to the competition?" is the response. Later they are told that management's streamlining (making staff redundant) has been too successful: they are now too small to be viable and the depot has to close, the rest of the workers have to go. Aside from the almost documentary of the plight of Britain's rail network, there are personal interactions between the working class characters in their daily lives that viewers can empathise with. In all it's well cast, well scripted and well directed.

'The Navigators' is a well made and moving TV drama. The largely unknown cast play their parts well. Set in 1995 during the privatization of British Rail, 'The Navigators' depicts the change in working relationships between management and workforce amongst a group of trackside workers at a small depot near Sheffield. We see the men's jobs gradually being phased out as different shareholders buy up the business. The eventual closure of the depot and the offer of redundancy leads to the men working long hours on the trackside for agencies who will even cut corners on health and safety to get the 'best deal'. In the end this leads to a tragic event, which puts the workmates in a terrible dilemma, as it is they and not the agency or employers that would be held responsible for their colleague's accident.

The drama is not all moribund and there are typical touches of Loach humour, such as the men getting splashed by the flushing toilet of a passing train and a clever workplace wind up around a tin of sardines. The main character Paul (Joe Duttine) is well played and Loach slowly builds up our sympathies for the men and the difficulties that their precarious employment places on domestic and family life. At the end it would be easy to condemn the men's conspiracy to cover up the accident, but Loach also points towards the bigger picture which leads to health and safety being criminally relegated to an inconvenience for employers rather than a priority.

Perhaps this film was a little too long, but Loach puts across well the suffering caused by job insecurity and how the awful, euphemistic management 'double speak' has smothered industrial relations and taken us into a new era of low-rights and low-paid work.

The usual descriptions have been "grim" and "gritty", this overlooks just how funny the dialogue and some of the situations are.And the actors performances are so convincing you forget that they are actors and not in a 'docu-soap'. Much more true to life than 'The Full Monty'

This film looked mildly interesting on Netflix so we ordered it. The first serious problem? No sub-titles. Why, you ask, would someone need titles for an English-language movie? The accents, mate! I'd actually spent time in England and I could understand maybe 50% of the dialogue. The thick Northern English dialect was incomprehensible to my wife. This isn't the filmmaker's fault as much as a distributor releasing it on the cheap. But then again, as dreary as the film turned out to be I can't imagine it ever had much of an audience. The plot turns slowly around rail workers who had a nifty deal under British Rail, forced to adjust when the government got tired to subsidizing a state rail system and sold it off to private investors.

I saw the movie today. It is good to know that while in Hollywood the so called entertainment industry wants to send our minds and conscious into sleep, comes a real humanist film maker and serves as a voice of society in a crisis, of real people like all of us that deal with problems that surface everywhere in the world. How men can survive and remain human and moral while fighting in vain in every establishment, including ones that suppose to help the individual. It is not just a Marxist manifesto but rather a compassion, loving, caring and worried look at a group of people that want to survive in a world that is changing rapidly economically and morally. You'll laugh with them, get frustrated with them and feel pity for them when they make the wrong choice (if such a thing can be defined). As always with Loach's films, it's so reliable that you immediately feel that the characters are a part of your life and there are no actors and no movie - just a look at familiar people who struggle to keep their jobs against a system that doesn't really care for its human resources and by that hurt them and herself. It is really touching and heart-tearing as much as loving with even quite a lot bits of humor which make it more credible. A real must!

Ken Loach has crafted a fine socio-economic drama focusing on the privatisation of British Rail and its effects on the railway workers at the bottom end of the industry ladder.

With the privatisation of British Rail, chaos reigns down on a small depot of rail workers. These workers, through which the story is primarily told, are mostly struggling with their finances already, but are generally content with their existences. After privatisation, their depot becomes one of a number of competitors for the railside work and industry "buzz-words" such as efficiency, mission statement and voluntary redundancy start to creep in. Workers leave and those remaining face harder conditions with less safety and less security. On top of that, there is the ever-looming threat of being replaced with agency workers prepared to do anything for work.

Ken Loach revels in this working-class material, seamlessly combining both the political and personal struggles of his generally honest and decent team of railway workers. Yet despite its downbeat tone, there is a great deal of typically British humour throughout "The Navigators" which balances out proceedings very nicely. Much of this humour is obtained from the bantering back and forth between the railway yard lads, and the crude dialogue and jokes are a joy to behold. Check out the sardines in the chip-shop scenario.....terrific! (note for dvd watchers; check out the scene where the time-clock is stolen in the deleted scenes section. It's a classic!)

Also, it's good to see a film with such a serious content not overdo itself with a hefty running time. Clocking in at just over 90 mins, it's almost the perfect length to complement the subject matter.

"The Navigators" eventually builds to its inevitable miserable conclusion, which is its main downfall. Don't expect any uplifting "Full Monty" style endings here. However, this is still a fine piece of film-making. Maybe not as good as some of Loach's other works, but certainly worth a look for anyone who appreciates honest down-and-dirty tales and a British sense of humour.

7.5/10

A Loach film is always worth catching, and this has it's amusing moments. However I was left feeling that this was very much "Riff Raff" repeated by a railway line. Similarly the characters were far too black & white. Having said that it certainly resonates in our era, as the national railway network grinds to a halt.

If first time script writer Rob Dawber hadn't torn a tendon falling off a sand dune on holiday in 1996, The Navigators may never have materialised. It prompted him to write to director Ken Loach about his experiences working on the railways for eighteen years in Sheffield. As a union rep he worked through privatisation until 1997. While the changes were being made, concerns of safety and working conditions were being ignored, and so the idea of dramatising the issues was born largely out of frustration. This is the story of a group of railtrack workers who are faced with ‘voluntary redundancy' and all it's contradictions. The conditions they have to work within, forces out an incongruous humour that naturally comes from oppressive and terrible situations, but their situation also leads inevitably to disaster. Loach is not particularly renowned for his aesthetically pleasing images in some circles, and the humour often comes with a callous edge. His films are just too near the knuckle for some people to be entertained by them. Those who do not want to be made aware of ‘issues' are the most disdainful, but they miss out, if they are interested in film at all, in terms of Loach's fantastic ability to inspire the most naturalistic performances, by actors, and non actors especially. Again, some of these faces are entirely unknown, other than the Full Monty's Steve Huison, but because of this, the characters are thoroughly believable. The interaction between them is awkward sometimes, disjointed, the dialogue does not run smoothly, and you get an impression of real life friction as a result. As producer Rebecca O'Brien says, ‘It gives a real veracity to the story being told.' Similarly, designer Martin Johnson says that the ultimate aim is to make it look so real that no one can see there has been any ‘design'. In this sense Loach just becomes stronger the more he does.