I, Daniel Blake (2016)
Storyline
A middle aged carpenter, who requires state welfare after injuring himself, is joined by a single mother in a similar scenario.
Directors
Cast
David Murray, Kate Rutter, Hayley Squires, Malcolm Shields, Dave Johns, Dylan McKiernan, Briana Shann, Sharon Percy, Kema Sikazwe, Natalie Ann Jamieson, Micky McGregor, Colin Coombs, Harriet Ghost, Stephen Clegg, Bryn Jones, Andy Kidd, Julie Nicholson, Viktoria Kay, Mick Laffey, John Sumner, Mickey Hutton, Jane Birch, Dan Li, Stephen Halliday, Shaun Prendergast, James Hepworth, Rob Kirtley
Trailer
Reviews
100
I, Daniel Blake is one of Loach’s finest films, a drama of tender devastation that tells its story with an unblinking neorealist simplicity that goes right back to the plainspoken purity of Vittorio De Sica.
91
The Film Stage
It’s often warm and quite funny, but is, at heart, a damning critique of the Tory government in Britain and their belt-tightening austerity measures, as well as a rallying cry for those who fall through the cracks.
80
The story is told with stark and fierce plainness: unadorned, unapologetic, even unevolved. Loach’s movie offends against the tacitly accepted rules of sophisticated good taste: subtlety, irony and indirection.
80
The film is anchored by incisive characterizations rich in integrity and heart, and by an urgent simplicity in its storytelling that's surprisingly powerful.
80
CineVue
Following the disappointing period dalliance of Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach's latest I, Daniel Blake is something of a return to form. It stands as a succinct and furious raging against the dying of the light, or more accurately the snuffing of the light by a privatised and punitive system more intent on lowering the figures than caring for those in need.
