Sadly, Dirty Pretty Things is not a sequel to Peter Berg's wickedly underrated Very Bad Things.  Instead, director Stephen Frears seems to be channeling Ken Loach as he relates this morality tale about illegal immigrants, which somehow becomes a psychological thriller with a smattering of urban legend.  So, yeah – it's pretty odd.  But not odd in the good way, that would make you say, "Let's smoke a fat one and watch Holy Mountain."  I'm talking odd in the other way, that would make you say, "What the hell did I just watch, and can I somehow get my money and/or time back?"

Most of Things takes place in and around a ritzy London hotel, with a focus on said hotel's low-paid staff.  But it's not just a highbrow version of Maid in Manhattan, boys and girls.  It's a Big Social Message because most of the employees are illegal immigrants who are forced to do all manner of awful things to fly under the radar yet still earn a buck (including – gasp! – prostitution).  I've never been to London, but the implication in Things is that England's largest city would slow to a grinding halt without these invisible refugee scofflaws.

"We are the people you do not see," says Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), in a line that made me want to get up and leave the theatre.  When he isn't working as a porter at the hotel, he's moonlighting as a cabdriver and ad hoc doctor to his syphilitic fellow hacks.  Okwe used to be a real doctor back in Nigeria, but here in London, he's the guy you call when the toilet in your hotel room won't flush.  And Things is the kind of film where hotel toilets don't flush because they're clogged with human hearts.

Okwe also has an unusual relationship with a Turkish virgin named Senay (Amélie’s Audrey Tautou), who works at the hotel and a nearby sweatshop when she isn't biting the cocks of bosses who force her to perform oral.  Okwe and Senay secretly live together, but it's never really clear who they're trying to keep the secret from.  But who cares when there's tickers in the plumbing?

Frears (Liam) hasn't had a hit since before the first Gulf War, and Things is another mediocre misstep.  If it wasn't for the strong performance from Ejiofor, and the sideshow attraction of Tautou simultaneously attempting both her first English-language role and a Turkish accent (an impressive feat, though it still made me wince – and I have a Tautou shrine at home), Things would be just another unconventional romance about organ removal.

1:37 -

for sexual content, disturbing images and language