The latest from British filmmaker Ken Loach—the most prominent contemporary director of gritty kitchen sink dramas—once again focuses on the struggles of the working class (as he did most recently in the Palme d’Or-winning 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, reviewed in VL-3/18). Bouncing from job to job in England’s gig economy and still reeling from the 2008 financial crash in which his home was lost, Ricky (Kris Hitchen) sells the family car in order to buy a white van to use for a parcel delivery job that involves very long days and almost zero flexibility. Without a vehicle, Ricky’s wife, Abby (Debbie Honeywood), is forced to take buses and sometimes taxis to reach her home-care clients, often working well into the evening. Their two kids, the younger Liza (Katie Proctor) and older Seb (Rhys Stone), increasingly must fend for themselves. Although the family is a loving, tight-knit bunch, the parents’ financial strains begin to have an impact, especially after a graffiti-spraying Seb gets in a fight at school and Ricky and Abby are called in for a conference, leading to a cascading series of events that has Ricky running afoul of his boss (a 'self-proclaimed patron saint of nasty bastards'). 'What happened to the eight-hour day?' asks one of Abby’s clients. Loach has again fashioned a powerful portrait of a contemporary family running on empty in a heartless treadmill economic system in which individual lives count for very little. Extras include an audio commentary with Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty, a 'making-of' featurette, deleted scenes, and a gallery of paintings of the cast and crew by Aidan Doyle. Recommended. (R. Pitman)