How can such a squalid story turn into such a tense thriller, consisting exclusively of petty details? It's an amazing film of a unique kind, actually boiling a tremendous soup on some nails. Jeremy Irons is a Polish electrician who with three co-workers are commissioned to go to London to fix an apartment for their boss. Their time is limited, their money is limited, they have to sleep and eat in that uninhabitable apartment while it is getting fixed, and everything goes wrong. At the same time the military coup takes place in Poland, it is winter 1981, and all contact with Poland, their families and friends, are broken. Jeremy Irons is the only one of them who knows English, and he decides not to worry his companions with any news about Poland, so they are kept in ignorance all the way, until they go home. We can only imagine the upsets that are bound to follow.
The suspense is tremendous, and the plight of Nowak (Jeremy Irons) is not enviable, as he runs out of money and has to resort to extreme survival tricks. It is not a likeable film, but it certainly is interesting and impressing, in offering a close insight into the plight of Polish guest workers in England far away from home, cut off from their families.
The suspense is tremendous, and the plight of Nowak (Jeremy Irons) is not enviable, as he runs out of money and has to resort to extreme survival tricks. It is not a likeable film, but it certainly is interesting and impressing, in offering a close insight into the plight of Polish guest workers in England far away from home, cut off from their families.