Very well executed

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Blistering performances.

Ken Loach doing his usual social documenting of working class nitty grittiness.It's "Boys from the Blackstuff" meets "Auf Wiedersehen Pet"; indignant about the selfish "Me Me Me" property developer greed of the Thatcher years – but leavened by typical Scouse (and Manc) sarcasm, and softened with a short if not so sweet romance.Robert Carlyle is Stevie, fresh out of jail, and having a go at life outside Scotland; gets taken on as a construction worker; is found an empty council flat to squat; is quickly shacking up with Susie, a fragile, troubled, Irish singer. He's soon back into his petty thieving ways; knocking off machinery from the site. "Labourin is rubbish, boxer shorts is better (selling of)" seems to be the extent of his aspiration. Stevie and Susie are both "unstable" characters so arguing is bound to be happening; he's having to drag her out of bed: "Depression is for the middle classes – the rest of us have got an early start in the morning". Then he gets news his mothers died – so he's off up to Scotland for the funeral. Cue a black comedy scene at the crematorium with inept swinging of urn – mother ash thrown all over the party of mourners.Returning, Stevie is just in time to see Susie sticking a needle up her arm. It's at this point Robert Carlyle breaks out into a warm up version of Begbie from Trainspotting: nut-ting people in the gob, stamping on their wotsits etc. And as for Susie: She's dumped. End of. No sympathy with junkie smack-heads has Stevie. Or Begbie. Or even Robert Carlyle.Ricky Tomlinson is in the film too – as a mouthy Trade Union sympathiser, his Commie vitriol redeemed by sarky gags and loud laughing; a bit like a younger version of Jim Royle, minus the beard.Towards the end i was thinking: someone's gonna be falling off this dodgy scaffolding without his tin hat on in a minute – and sure enough, he was. And Them Barstewards are gonna have to pay for that. We need some Natural Justice here. Lets burn the whole flipping lot down. Any volunteers? Yeah. Stevie will do it. With glee.The film is unaffected in its down to earth portrayal of the working class bloke: the thieving cheating lying lazy barsteward that skives around as cheap casual labour on building sites while fiddling the dole type of working class bloke. The type that doesn't really give a monkeys. As long as it gets paid. Even if it doesn't get paid enough. Cus the company employing it is an exploitative cheating lying greedy barsteward too.Its a right riff raffy racket is the Building Trade. Seems to be the message. Something i – and all of us – knows already. So nothing new there then. But my – and your – cynicism will get a nice pat on its back.I wouldn't want any of this lot building a house for me.

This is a good film but what is great about it truly is the acting. I agree with the other poster here that the acting is phenomenal and the main actors in this movie truly shine as though they really are the characters they are playing in this film, 100% believable in their roles. Big congrats to the cast of this one for their great work. I only saw this by happenstance because my friend taped it on a cable channel years ago by mistake and we were looking for a tape to record a show while we were out and I said not to tape over this because it looked interesting, how about that? It's about the working class in England and seems to be very realistic about these hard working people who sometimes have very dangerous jobs they simply don't have any other choice of making a living. I am surprised never to have heard of this movie before but if you get a chance to watch it I would say check it out for sure if you are a fan of good acting :)

Riff Raff is one of Loach's more humorous depictions of working class life. That said it's still not comedy, it a melodrama with political overtones.What it's really about is the collapse of the working classes due to the Thatcherite policies introduced in the 1980's. The collapse of the power of the trade unions and the incorporation of capitalisation and 'big business'.These workers are struggling to live below the breadline, working in unsafe conditions and squatting wherever they can.It's a tragedy of circumstance really but there are moments of romance and humour provided mostly by Ricky Tomlinson. Taking a bath in a show house. Hilarious.

I first saw this film, drunk one Friday after a heavy nights drinking after work on a building site. I was then a bricklayer - a job I had done for over five years. Watching this film, it dawned on me that this was filmed in the part of London where i lived. I could truly relate to it and I would have sworn that the actors had themselves spent their lives working on sites it was so realistic. Go to any site and you will see at least one character who you could say directly related to a charater in this film. The safety aspect has been cleaned up a lot now but back then, sites were a dangerous place to work. Accidents were common and the end scenes were not in any way unrealistic.The thing that did it for me was the portrayal of the working class of Britain. The sentiments were all there, the humour, the desparation, the sense of wanting to rise above the rest and the shattered dreams. They are all here. I would say that if anyone from abroad wanted to study the character of the British working class then they MUST see this film. It is tough, gritty and full of humour...a truly remarkable piece of film that is sadly neglected. Buy it, Rent it, Steal it, Borrow it...whatever you do SEE IT!