STREAM ANYTIME with Prime Video from $12.99

Dirty Pretty Things

Chiwetel Ejiofor (Actor), Audrey Tautou (Actor), Stephen Frears (Director) Rated:

Format: DVD

324 ratings

IMDb7.3/10.0

Additional DVD options

Edition

Discs

Price

New from

Used from

DVD
April 12, 2016

"Please retry"

—

$9.98

—

DVD
July 27, 2021

"Please retry"

—

$9.99

$10.61

DVD

"Please retry"

—

$5.07

$3.42

DVD
March 23, 2004

"Please retry"

—

$7.50

$1.49

Watch Instantly with

Rent

Buy

Dirty Pretty Things

$3.99

$12.99

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Angus Finney
580
DVD
$11.85
Get it as soon as Thursday, Sep 9
FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
DVD
2 offers from $50.00
Audrey Tautou
512
DVD
$8.27
& Free Shipping
Only 12 left in stock - order soon.
Audrey Tautou
315
DVD
$24.95
Get it as soon as Thursday, Sep 9
FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon
Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).
Audrey Tautou
170
DVD
$16.98
+ $3.99 shipping
Only 10 left in stock - order soon.
Bruno Todeschini
768
DVD
$19.60
Get it as soon as Thursday, Sep 9
FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon

Special offers and product promotions

Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now

Editorial Reviews

From Stephen Frears, the Oscar(R)-nominated director of THE GRIFTERS (Best Director, 1990) and DANGEROUS LIAISONS, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS stars Audrey Tautou (AMÉLIE) in a harrowing tale of struggle and survival for two immigrants who learn that everything is for sale in London's secret underworld! Part of an invisible working class, Nigerian exile Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Turkish chambermaid Senay (Tautou) toil at a west London hotel that is full of illegal activity. Then late one night Okwe makes a shocking discovery, which creates an impossible dilemma and tests the limits of all they know! Honored with numerous European film awards and nominations -- including wins at the London Critics Circle Film Awards and the Venice Film Festival -- you'll find this gritty urban thriller to be thoroughly engrossing and impossible to forget!

Product details

Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.85:1
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 5.25 x 0.75 inches; 4 Ounces
Director ‏ : ‎ Stephen Frears
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Anamorphic, Color, NTSC
Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 37 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ March 23, 2004
Actors ‏ : ‎ Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo, Sergi López, Benedict Wong
Producers ‏ : ‎ Allon Reich, David M. Thompson, Julie Goldstein, Margo Myers, Mark Cartier
Language ‏ : ‎ English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French, Unqualified
Studio ‏ : ‎ Miramax Films
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00018D3LE
Writers ‏ : ‎ Steven Knight
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1

Best Sellers Rank: #88,619 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #7,712 in Mystery & Thrillers (Movies & TV)
- #19,093 in Drama DVDs

Customer Reviews:
324 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		69%
4 star		9%
3 star		11%
2 star		7%
1 star		5%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

A movie about love exploitation and the role of immigrants in the West THE best film of 2002

Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2020

Verified Purchase

Dirty Pretty Things was by FAR the best movie of the year when it was released in 2002. No movie before or since has dealt with the role of immigrants in the West like this movie did.

The setting is London focusing upon a range of immigrants. Chiwetel Ejiofor one of my favorite actors is Okwe a Nigerian doctor who had to flee his country due to corruption. He entered illegally and holds down two jobs one as a taxi driver and the other as a desk clerk at the Baltic Hotel. Audrey Tautou as Senay is Turkish and applying for asylum in England while working illegally. She is a maid at the Baltic and then works at a sweat shop sewing clothes, but dreams of going to the U.S. She has immigration breathing down her back, while her boss at the factory is demanding sexual favors. Benedict Wong is Guo Yi, Okwe’s friend who works in a hospital. Ziatko Buric is Ivan a Russian who is the doorman at the hotel. Sophie Okonedo is Juliette, a prostitute who frequents the hotel for her business. Finally Sergi Lopez is Juan the Spanish manager at the Baltic who also has a side business of selling internal organs from immigrants who then get a fake passport in return.

The main theme of the movie is what immigrants do in the West. They clean up after people, they drive them around, they provide sex, etc. They even give up body parts so that citizens can live healthy. That’s shown right at the start when Okwe finds a heart stuffed into a toilet at the hotel. Many have degrees and are professionals, but when they come to the West they have to take up menial jobs. They keep their head down and dream of a better life. All of this goes completely unnoticed by the majority who have always ignored and looked down upon immigrants and the poor. They don’t know about the struggles people from other countries go through to get to the West and they don’t care to know either. They are the voiceless people that are in every country helping make sure things run.

The plot is combination of unrequited love and the illegal trade in human organs. It has a crazy twist and end that will make you cry.

This is the reason why Dirty Pretty Things works so well. The plotting of Juan and the relationship between Okwe and Senay will draw you in, and then you’ll learn something about immigrants as well along the way.
C

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Carlos G. Anderson

A fantastic, fantastic screenplay

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a fantastic screenplay. It's a freshman effort by Steven Knight (Locke, Taboo, Peaky Blinders). It has so much emotional nuance and detail. And, this merits saying, it is such an unusual story. Fears does an excellent job directing and there are are a couple of standout performances, mainly Chiwetel Ejiofor (who we now know to be a first class actor in America) and Audrey Tautou (who, in France, is a pretty badass leading lady). Highly recommend.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Choice Critic

Before "12 Years a Slave"

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2012

Verified Purchase

This is an example of a very good movie that was not promoted properly. This look at the underbelly of modern London is fascinating. In "Dirty Pretty Things" the viewer is taken beneath the usual staid and proper face of the city to its dirty tenements and nasty underworld. And we're not invited into a lower-class colorful Cockney world.

Instead, we are shown into a world teeming with immigrants, legal and illegal, from all over the world, trying to survive in a brutal world without mercy for the defenseless. It is a world filled with sweatshops you would expect to see in a third world country, prostitutes, and predators of every stripe.The legal immigrant is Senay, a Turkish Muslim played by the lovely Audrey Tautou. She displays the wide range of her acting talent in a role quite different fron the whimsical pixie she portayed in "Amelie". She is a housekeeper in the aptly named Baltic Hotel.

Her counterpart is Okwe, an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, a former doctor who is now a taxi driver and night desk clerk at the same hotel where Senay works and is allowed to sleep on her couch when she is not there. I don't know where they found Chitwetel Ejiofor, but he has star potential. He actually steals this movie in my opinion, even with an outstanding performance by Tautou.

The two of them are thrown together by happenstance. Each is preyed upon by the type of vultures that haunt a large city's underbelly. Senay is sexually exploited by a sweatshop owner. Okwe is exploited by Sneaky Juan the kind of underworld denizen always working an angle at some vulnerable immigrant's expense. He co-opts Okwe into using his medical skill for an outrageously immoral scheme in exchange for fake passports for Okwe and Senay. After their experience in the London underworld these two immigrants want to emigrate.

The satisfying irony of how Okwe obtains the passports from Sneaky Juan, and then turns the tables on him, is worth the price of admission itself. It involves a very clever plot twist. The movie has a bittersweet ending but that is hardly a negative for this gem. Very nicely done and well worth seeing. With wider distribution this could have been a foreign film winner.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

schumann_bg

one of Frears's toughest films

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2017

Verified Purchase

There is a lot that is good about this: showing the plight of iilegal immigrants, the terrible conditions in which some people have to live in London, unnoticed by most other people, a tightly worked plot, much good characterisation and acting, notably from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Toutou. They are both moving, living desperately on the edge: he as a Nigerian doctor who now works as a hotel night porter and taxi driver, both full time, it seems; she as a chambermaid at the same hotel, under the unscrupulous manager. Other characters, all of non-white ethnicities, are struggling to survive, and come across vividly. The film is very well shot - full of colour, and edgy, although the plot becomes so horrifying one is less able to take any pleasure in this. For me, it became too off-putting when it became clear this was going to be about the illegal organ trade. I couldn't find much information on Wikipedia about how much of this actually goes on, but I assume that in London the scenario we are shown is rare. It is used here in a setup that has thriller and vaguely comic elements, jarring somewhat. As I say, there is a lot that is affecting in the human interactions, but the tone is not handled as well as in My Beautiful Laundrette, made by Frears 17 years before. For all its violence, the 80s vision of London doesn't lurch into the nightmare scenario presented here, and feels closer to reality, less on the verge of being a thriller.

3 people found this helpful

Hud

Your tears will flow and make a sea

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

Oh London, built up on the rewards of conquest, slavery and empire, then upon the sheer power of its services, sprouting a skyline of pure wealth. And underneath this gloss, in the underbelly, the exploited, abused workers making it tick and run. Migrants in desperate need to live, to just survive, to send money back home. Would you do any different.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is magnificent (as usual) with a presence that screams I want to rise beyond this dirt and grime. Audrey Tatou does a beautiful rendition of a desperate and sensitive soul. Their chemistry is strong, is this how two lost people find something? Whoever cast them together should do so again, please!

The song "Tiny Tears make up an ocean" by Tindersticks should have been the sound-track to this desolate bitter-sweet movie of utter melancholia.

neville britten

give this a miss

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2019

Verified Purchase

This thriller has more loose ends than a rasta's dreadlocks. Item, someone dies while undergoing an illegal kidney transplant and so they cut out the person's heart and shove it down the toilet where it gets stuck in the U-tube. Really, I ask you. The first rule of crime stories is they should be plausible.

One person found this helpful

Brendan Ray Cyrus

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2017

Verified Purchase

Brilliant movie about the multi-cultural pitt....erm sorry i meant paradise i live in -London. Brilliant story, fantastic acting, and well directed by the talented director. This really is brave movie-making. If you think Albert Square (Eastenders) is a fair depiction of multicultural London, then don't bother with this fine movie.
Selah

One person found this helpful

Anne Cruickshank

Must watch

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

A great story.. With mind- broadening aspects of the lives of immigrants trying to survive in the frail freedom afforded in the western culture they have escaped to.. In contrast to the oppression they escaped from...

See all reviews