Popular reviews

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  Review by shookone ★★½

  Loach leaving the style of „filmic communism“ as utilised in Land & Freedom just a year earlier, turning the attention to more intimate, personal fortunes and instrumentalize them for the political message.

  In Carla’s Song the social conscience of a scottish bus driver is activated when meeting a nicaraguan woman, realizes the senselessness of his own life and follows her to central America to help her fight against her traumata. a very overconstructed white saviour trope, Loach & Laverty being mostly in sync with their idealistic self here before actually starting to use their trademark style for more clever filmic outputs.

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  Review by Graham ★★★★ 2

  Glaswegian bus driver George strikes up a cautious friendship with Carla, a Nicaraguan refugee suffering from debilitating PTSD a long, long way from home. Racked with a backstory that threatens her very existence, Carla struggles to survive and succumbs to her demons that repeatedly get the better of her.

  As Carla's friendship with George blooms into something a little deeper, it becomes clear to him that her future peace is dependent on answering questions that can only be addressed in her homeland. With that, the pair set off to Nicaragua in search of her past and to attempt to rescue her future.

  In what was to begin a decades long partnership between director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty, Carla's…

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  Review by Stephen M ★★★★

  Nice to see a feature I'd missed from one of my favorite directors, Ken Loach. This combination political film/love story is set against the US/CIA-backed Contra War in Nicaragua and was Loach's first of many collaborations with screenwriter Paul Laverty. It's moving, has nicely drawn characters and, like almost all of of Loach's work, it focuses on the strength and endurance of oppressed peoples by emphasizing their humanity over polemics.

  The film is broken into two halves. It begins in Glasgow where George, a plucky but kind doubledecker bus driver (an excellent Robert Carlyle) befriends, helps and falls in love with Carla (Oyanka Cabezas), a Nicaraguan refugee who has PTSD from the trauma she experienced in the Contra War. In…

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★★ 3

  Maggie's in the Mud: 80s and 90s British Cinema Project

  I wouldn't be at all surprised if I ever heard that Ken Loach has an upside-down American flag hanging in his bog.

  Carla's Song is a bit of a film of two halves and while they're both really good, you can see it's the second half where Loach's heart is really in it. Having the opportunity to take vicious swipes at America and the CIA's disgraceful funding of the Contras in Nicaragua, he clearly comes into his own but he doesn't neglect what went before.

  The beautifully developed relationship between Robert Carlyle and a remarkable Oyanka Cabezas reveals a side to his filmmaking that he'll probably never get much credit…

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★★ 1

  The first in what has proved to be a long term partnership between director Ken Loach and scriptwriter Paul Laverty, Carla's Song remains one of their strongest projects.

  Based on Scotsman Laverty's own experiences as a civil rights lawyer in Nicaragua, the film tells the story of George, an apolitical bus driver from Glasgow whose strong moral code and sense of injustice sees him bewitched by Carla, a Nicaraguan immigrant who cannot pay her fare. Slowly and hesitantly a relationship develops, but George is aware he cannot truly understand Carla until he can unlock the door to her growingly obvious inner traumas namely PTSD from her experiences fighting for the Sandinista's and concern for her lost love Antonio. Together they…

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  Review by loureviews ★★★★

  First viewing since the year of release, and with age and distance this film works much better now, with its mix of Scottish romantic whimsy and Nicaraguan political revolution.

  One of Robert Carlyle's best roles as the bored bus driver George, dealing day after day with jobsworth bureaucrats like Inspector 'Scratcher', gives this film a beating heart even before we meet Carla, a refugee dancer played by Oyanka Cabezas.

  In Carla we see both steel and vulnerability and we feel, very early on, that her story will take both of them to her homeland to find some closure, and her former lover, Antonio. In making the journey George will learn something about himself and the world, just as Carla finds…

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  Review by Wilson ★★★½

  Carla's Song feels like the first film in the second act of Ken Loach's career. It is his first film with Paul Laverty as the screen-writer, replacing Jim Allen as Loach's recent collaborator ,and Laverty immediately brings his Scottish sensibility to Loach's filmmaking.

  Laverty never feels like an extension of Loach, he feels like he changed Loach. The films are different, they feel different and they sound different. The second half of Loach's career is the better half of Loach's career.

  Carla's Song is both a good film and a film that Laverty and Loach would improve upon in the future. It isn't smoothly constructed. The two-halves structure doesn't sit together with especial ease. However both halves work on their…

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  Review by 🦇rosie🦇 ★★★★

  i’m really sad now and love robert carlyle very much

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  Review by Fake Shemp

  As cute as Robert is there is no way you'd take off with him anywhere ya random stranger man

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  Review by Shaun ★★★★

  The harrowing story of a young Nicaraguan woman and a young Robert Carlyle eager to help her sort out or at least get to grips with her traumas. Paints a political picture of Nicaragua in 1987 and the turmoil and also hope the locals were under at that time. Scott Glens character is the only on the nose preachy character, although it's probably based on fact.

  A good dose of realism and had a sense of ambition for the future.

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  Review by Jacob Stolworthy ★★★

  I want to be on one of Robert Carlyle's bus rides

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  Review by Georgedcc

  This is the first of many collaborations between Loach and regular screenwriter Paul Laverty, drawing upon Laverty's experience as a human rights lawyer in Nicaragua. Begins life as a familiar feeling Ken Loach film, a little tale of a working class bus driver, frustrated with his jobsworth bosses, and shows compassion and empathy with his passengers at the expense of profits.

  He comes across Carla randomly on his bus route, and grows protective of her, though Carla isn't always interested in his attempts to save her. Carla is deeply scarred from her experiences in Nicaragua, suffering from PTSD and things outside of George's control.

  While George has a good conscience and a natural instinct of right and wrong, he's not…