Description: From Stephen Frears, the Oscar(R)-nominated director of THE GRIFTERS (Best Director, 1990) and DANGEROUS LIAISONS, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS stars Audrey Tautou (AMÉLIE) in a harrowing tale of struggle and survival for two immigrants who learn that everything is for sale in London's secret underworld! Part of an invisible working class, Nigerian exile Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Turkish chambermaid Senay (Tautou) toil at a west London hotel that is full of illegal activity. Then late one night Okwe makes a shocking discovery, which creates an impossible dilemma and tests the limits of all they know! Honored with numerous European film awards and nominations -- including wins at the London Critics Circle Film Awards and the Venice Film Festival -- you'll find this gritty urban thriller to be thoroughly engrossing and impossible to forget!
Amazon.com: The luminous Audrey Tautou (Amelie) stars in Dirty Pretty Things, a riveting thriller about an illegal immigrant in London named Okwe (Chiwetal Ejiofor, Amistad), a doctor in his homeland who now works days as a taxi driver and nights as a hotel desk clerk. When a hooker tells him there's a mess in one of the hotel's bathrooms, Okwe finds a human heart in the toilet. He soon discovers a snare of desperation, poverty, and black-market body organs--and finds that his only friend, a Turkish hotel maid (Tautou), may be the next to be caught. Dirty Pretty Things, skillfully directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, Dangerous Liaisons, My Beautiful Laundrette), fuses taut suspense with an unsettling portrait of life among the British underclass of immigrant service workers. Thanks to the excellent cast and script, the movie makes its social points subtly, while the gripping story coils itself around you. --Bret Fetzer
A searing and caustic look at London's underworld, Dirty Pretty Things follows a cast of foreign characters led by a wonderful Chiwetel Ejiofor in a plot revolving around exploitation and illegal organ transplant; it's well-acted and well worth your time.
Very different type of thriller This is not your ordinary cops and robbers story. The protagonist Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an illegal Nigerian immigrant in London who discovered a human heart blocking the toilet in the hotel where he works. He's a hard-working man who drives a taxi in the day and works in a hotel at night. He rents the couch of a Turkish girl, Senay (Audrey Tautou).
He reports the heart to his boss, who refuses to report the incident and advises the man that the hotel business is about strangers who will always surprise them. "It's our job to make everything pretty in the morning."
Okwe cannot speak to the police, but he cannot let the incident go either.
"Dirty Pretty Things" gives us a view of the seedier side of London. This is definitely a thinking person's mystery with a different and fascinating story. Kept me watching all the way through.
Rebecca Kyle, December 2008
Dirty Pretty Things makes the world smaller Dirty Pretty Things is a great movie, with a strong message about how small the world is and makes one think twice about their purchases. Did someone have to endure working in a sweatshop to make my clothes? It opened my eyes about the world around me and through this movie the invisible (workers, and silent ideology) become visible and audible.
gripping intense and engaging Probably the best cast I have seen ever, and they are all relatively little known actors. An absolutely must see if you can handle it. The struggle as it really is rather than the glorified struggle Hollywood often clings to.
Poorly Scripted But Still Engaging Dirty Pretty Things is a reasonably good thriller set in the rather depressing world of immigrant workers in London. The film is part horror story as a hotel clerk from Nigeria discovers that the hotel is being used for an illegal human organ scheme. Chiwetel Ehiiofor is very strong in the lead role and Audrey Tautou does well as a Turkish immigrant who is struggling to survive and escape London for New York. Where the movie bogged down a bit for me is in some of the moralizing dialogue gets to be a bit too contrived and not true to character. Other than that flaw the film is unusual in it's subject matter and interesting on a number of levels. It certainly demonstrates the cruel and mercenary nature of people who are ready to exploit the vulnerable among us.
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