Leo and Rob like to steal cars. They do it because it's fun and they have nothing else to do in the post-industrial port-side town where they live, though the few quid that Amir, a crooked garage owner, pays them a for the cars they bring him doesn't go amiss.
One day, Amir asks Leo to steal a car to-order from the docks; the pay is good and Leo wants Rob to be in on the job. Leo is keen, but Rob is dubious about the plan. Rob is right to to be dubious The plan becomes derailed, and the derailment has consequences.
When he isn't stealing cars with Leo, sometimes accompanied by Leo's girlfriend Kasia, who literally goes along for the ride, Rob looks after his terminally ill father, a former seaman who has contracted an asbestos-related lung condition and who has been abandoned by his culpable, erstwhile employers. Rob and his father, Oswald, have a strained relationship but Rob does his best to care for him .
The actors playing the central characters all give sterling performances. Charley Palmer Rothwell plays Rob as a young man confused about why his life should be the way it is, but also as a lad with a good heart. Morgane Polanski (daughter of Roman) shows Kasia, a college drop-out, as being just as aimless as Rob, but she is full of tenderness and love as we see, especially when she takes time to sit and talk to Oswald. Thomas Turgoose, best known from the Shane Meadows 'This Is England' series of films, expands his dramatic range and gives us a Leo who is by turns affable and quick tempered; his darker side giving him dominance over the more physically imposing, but softer-hearted Rob.
Director, Rene van Pannevis relies in this, his debut feature film, not so much on action (those looking for a crime caper should really look elsewhere), but on the meticulous examination of the characters; and his skill lies in making us care about them. He involves us in Rob and Oswald's bickering and he makes us want Rob to see that the loving Kasia might just offer him some hope for the future. Looted could easily be an Italian Neo-Realist piece transposed to present day Hartlepool.
Aadel Nodeh-Farahani's excellent cinematography juxtaposes the gloom of Oswald's makeshift bedroom at home with the big skies and far-horizon vistas that, even in his last days, Oswald still yearns for.
This slow-paced, almost elegiac film, a kind of cinematic love child of Ken Loach and Vittorio De Sica, gets a respectable 7 from this reviewer.
