The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Saying frankly, I did not enjoy, nor being moved by the movie. The story is neither dramatic nor exciting. The lead character is not well defined and thus easy to confuse the audience. After watching it, being little bit disappointed, I went out to walk my dog, but the movie occupied my thought even after I came home. This is a story in railway workers in the UK, however I could see similar situation in Japan too. In Japan, many companies are gradually recovering from serious downfall. But during the process of profit recovery, companies have replaced fixed-cost employees by variable cost contract workers. As a result, the lifetime employment system has collapsed, and the power of the unions, the members of which are employees only, have been eroding. At the same time, number of contract workers, who do not have systematic training and skills building, has increased. In this trend the gap between peoples of high wages and low wages are becoming wider. British society has been many years the forerunner in the world of winning the rights of workers. But these rights are now too easily forgotten under the pressure of global economy. This is a social crisis in longer term. At least this movie has succeeded to portray this crisis.

This film was very underseen in the USA, though many consider it one of Loach's finest. As a traveler who has seen firsthand what privatization is doing to the UK transportation system, this film struck me as grittily authentic. As with so many of his films, Loach chooses to address social ills by exploring their effects upon working class characters. But not every plot point has to do with the topic at hand, and that is why the films work well, because the narrative has a life of its own driven by these characters (most of them quite likable although flawed) that goes beyond its "message."

Although it contains some funny moments, this film is no comedy; rather it is a biting satire of the mess that resulted when the Conservative Government in the UK decided to split up and privatise British Rail in 1995 (one wonders why they didn't go all the way and do the same to the highways) as seen through the eyes of track workers. Perhaps the most ludicrous moment is when their supervisor in their newly created regional private company tells the workers to take equipment out to dump bins and smash it up because "it isn't up to scratch, we've got to have high standards now." "But it's perfectly good, can't we sell it?" they protest. "What, sell it to the competition?" is the response. Later they are told that management's streamlining (making staff redundant) has been too successful: they are now too small to be viable and the depot has to close, the rest of the workers have to go. Aside from the almost documentary of the plight of Britain's rail network, there are personal interactions between the working class characters in their daily lives that viewers can empathise with. In all it's well cast, well scripted and well directed.

Ken Loach films are always worth watching, because his characters are so believeable. Mostly it feels like you're watching a documentary. That is because of the mostly fantastic acting."The Navigators" are about five railway workers, who after the privatisation of the British Rail are deformed in their class consciousness. It goes so far that they prefer to have one of them probably killed (while they are moving him) instead of getting their private rail company into trouble. This is also about capitalistic lack of efficiency. The workers smash tools instead of selling them, ordered by their employers. Instead of getting concrete by train, they transport it in buckets, because that's the cheapest (but most slow) way.Some people might say that Ken Loach is repeating himself. That's wrong, because he deals with people, who all are different, although they are workers. His message needs to be repeated too. Greed of the few is much more important than other peoples dignity and lives. And it doesn't matter that a "labour" party rules Britain.