Lack of good storyline.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I think I'd seen a trailer for the film a long time ago, I remembered it mainly because of the leading actor, I was certainly interested to see what I would make of it, directed by Ken Loach (Kes, Sweet Sixteen, Looking for Eric). Basically set in 1987 Glasgow, Scottish bus driver George Lennox (Robert Carlyle) meets Nicaraguan woman Carla (Oyanka Cabezas), living a precarious, profoundly sad life in exile. They do eventually get closer, the first time they are about to make love George is shocked to see Carla's back is scarred, she explains that she is suicidal because her boyfriend is missing and her family has dispersed, George decides to take Carla back to Nicaragua to find out what has happened to them. Once there, Carla is haunted by nightmarish memories, she and George are thrown into the middle of the war between the United States and the Sandinistas, there is a mystery over where the boyfriend is, but Carla's American aid worker friend Bradley (Scott Glenn) is the key to his whereabouts, Carla does find her family in the end. Also starring Salvador Espinoza as Rafael, Louise Goodall as Maureen, Richard Loza as Antonio, Gary Lewis as Sammy, Subash Singh Pall as Victor, Stewart Preston as McGurk, Margaret McAdam as George's Mother, Pamela Turner as Eileen and Greg Friel as Keyboard Player. Carlyle, in between the time of Trainspotting and The Full Monty, gives a charming performance, Cabezas as the exotic refugee is alright, I agree with critics that their time in Scotland is interesting, but once they get abroad the film goes a bit downward, I have to be honest that I got a little bored, even with war stuff going on, overall it's a fairly forgettable romantic drama. It was nominated the BAFTA for the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film, and it was nominated the BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Feature Film. Okay!

In CARLA'S SONG, Ken Loach focuses his brand of UK social realism on The Contras and Sandinistas. The film recounts the story of a Scottish bus driver, played by Robert Carlyle, who falls in love with a beautiful woman from Nicaragua. She has been physically and psychically wounded in the revolutionary conflict of that country, and they both journey to Nicaragua in an attempt put her life back together. At face value, this seems like a weak or far fetched premise for a film, yet CARLA'S SONG demonstrates a very real and intense chemistry between the two lovers. Robert Carlyle is most convincing with his extemporaneous ad libs and off-hand comments, and they really added a sincere warmth to his character. However, subtitles were desperately needed for the Spanish speaking parts of the film, and a large chunk of the Scottish dialog was nearly uninterpretable. Overall, CARLA'S SONG renders an accurate portrait of 1980's working poor in Scotland, and a realistic view of the Sandinista Freedom Fighters as seen through the prism of a world class love affair.

(SPOILER) So Carla will stay there, with her disfigured, mute ex-lover. This was not a surprise, and was not interesting. When I say not a surprise, I don't mean it in a praising way or to call it organic or inevitable given the rest of the story. It's inevitable and predictable only from the viewpoint of the script's very dutiful political consciousness. It wouldn't be noble, uplifting, inspiring, etc. etc., for Carla to opt out of the struggle and go back to Scotland with George.Please let me be clear, I am not objecting to the script's sympathy and engagement with the Sandinistas. I am not objecting to a film having a political outlook, nor do I object to that outlook being on the Left (which is my own standpoint anyway). What I do object to is conditioning the characters' choices according to an imposed external view of what is okay, rather than what has been developing in the story.

Oyanka Cabezas' character was never in doubt as the film unwound; she was completely believable. Indeed the film took us on a journey from a care-fee bus driver in Glascow (Robert Carlyle - "The Full Monty") to the CIA-operated civil war in Nicaragua where Cabezas seeks her former lover who has been brutalized by the CONTRAS. Loach did a masterful job capturing the atmosphere of that bleak episode. He allows us to catch a glimpse of what changes would or may occur in humans if given the opportunity to escape poverty and ignorance. But the forces that would maintain the staus quo are far too powerful to allow the Nicaraguans to reach that goal. If only we could understand Carlyle's English; the easiest for me to comprehend what he was saying was when he was speaking with Cabezas, whose English was halting, yet understandable. If only Carlyle did not drive that bus in Nicaragua - - - somehow I knew that was meant to be.