Last Resort

A glowing review of this film on the radio enticed me. The review, I recalled in retrospect, was about the film's technical points. I experienced the film as a sad and predictable home movie about a Russian woman and child, who simply do not know what they are doing with their lives. The one counterpoint character in the life-in-the-gulag story line, played very well by Paddy Considine, kept the film alive, in my opinion. I was impressed with the film's ending. There was a message about responsibility and self victimization that was very refreshing. I did not feel that the film offered entertainment, even in my broadest definition, but it did offer a look at poverty, brutish bureaucracy and the consequences of ignorance in the whole realm of illegal immigration. Perhaps it could be shown regularly at airports in developing countries.