As Sinéad O’Connor sang in the ’90s, “England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses,” but the seductive pull of Downton Abbey and its celebration of wealth and landed gentry may have given us rose-colored glasses about merry old England. These films remind us that the United Kingdom is diverse, gritty and much more interesting than its Royals and its manicured gardens would suggest.
Dirty Pretty Things (2002): A behind the scenes look at immigrant London in which a Turkish woman (Audrey Tautou) who is a hotel chambermaid and a Nigerian doctor who now drives cabs (Chiwetel Ejiofor) stumble upon a crime that puts their lives in danger.
Sexy Beast (2000): The most shocking thing about this mafia film is watching Ben Kingsley, the man who played Gandhi to Oscar acclaim, curse almost non-stop. This violent heist film features Kingsley, as Roger Ebert put it, as a “savage mad-dog frothing gangster.”
Snatch (2000): Guy Ritchie (who has gone on to make those Robert Downey,Jr./Sherlock Holmes films) started his career with a look at London’s violent side in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He returned for another Tarantino-esque crime comedy thriller in which Brad Pitt turns up as an unintelligible gypsy. In this high voltage take on London’s crime underworld, there’s boxing, crime lords who feed bodies to pigs and Benicio Del Toro.
Life is Sweet (1990): Director Mike Leigh captures a working-class London family. Jim Broadbent is the patriarch of the family and his twin daughters assert their independence from one another in ongoing squabbles in this tragi-comedy that manages to tackle dark topics and celebrate life in all of its messy glory.
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