Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33128 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-04-22
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ken Loach does for the railways in The Navigators what he did for the construction industry in Riff-Raff (1990). As ever, his sympathies lie firmly with the ordinary working blokes, not above of bit of banter and skiving, but essentially trying to do a decent job and stay loyal to their mates in the face of managerial double-talk and corporate devotion to the bottom line.

It's 1995, and the Tories have just carried out their disastrous, pea-brained scheme to break up the railways. We follow the fortunes of a gang of track workers in South Yorkshire as they find themselves confronted with all the fallout of privatisation--redundancies, cost-cutting, corner-cutting and the wholesale junking of any concern with safety or quality of work. Accidental deaths, one hapless time-server explains, "have got to be kept to an acceptable level".

Two scenes encapsulate the tragic-comic tone of the film. At one point the disbelieving workers are ordered by managers to smash up a load of new equipment; it's surplus to requirements, but can't possibly be sold to "the competition", their former British Rail workmates at the depot down the line. Later, called to a derailment, the track workers pass a whole series of hard-hat wearing managers, each paying no attention to what needs doing but muttering fiercely into a mobile phone trying to pass the buck for the accident to another company.

Loach cast the film using local actors and comics, and there's a strong sense of authenticity in the flat accents and dry Yorkshire humour. But ultimately this is a lament for the destruction, not only of what was once a great rail network, but of the pride and camaraderie of those who worked on it. The film's ending is fittingly bleak. --Philip Kemp

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Wide Screen
English
English
Region 2
Film Writer Documentary
Early British Transport Film
Deleted Scenes With Editors Commentary

Synopsis
Ken Loach's THE NAVIGATORS follows a group of South Yorkshire railway workers during the mid-1990s privatisation of British Rail. The film features Loach's typically asute social commentary and subtle humour.

Customer Reviews

Privatized rails are not what rails used to be
Ken Loach is attracted by extreme situations. In this film he shows the damage privatisation caused in the railway industry. Team spirit was destroyed among railwaymen with all it brought along : tension, selfishness, isolation, carelessness, even maybe hatred and cruelty. The men lost their daily security and it also meant tension in the families, with their wives, girlfriends, and ex-spouses and children. Family life suffered tremendously, also meaning some other blights like alcoholism, though Loach does not insist on that point. He describes in details the way agencies become the real go-betweens for these now flexible workers and the real employers who cut on cost even if it means less safety and more danger. Of course Ken Loach ends up with an accident : a man is wounded by a train at night because there was no one to make sure the tracks were empty while the men were transporting concrete in buckets, having regressed in their working conditions at least one century. Work there is, for sure, but unions are banned, regular hours are dead, private life disappears, working conditions are primitive and accidents become a real plague, not to mention the tremendous waste it means when two private firms are competing on one site, each one sending less men than before but the two together sending mor men. A complete break with the present in the name of a future that smells like the past very much. And today the state is forced to go back into the picture to guarantee some security and regularity, for the passengers this time.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Class Typecasting
Great to make a movie about the privatisation of Britain.
But why does Mr Loach have to typecast so heavily.
You can criticise society but please bring in some "realistic" personalities
portraying "working class", some diversity would've been more believable.
It's an insult to the British working-class, in my view