Movie Review: Ken Loach, longtime chronicler of social ills, seeks a hopeful note in ‘The Old Oak’
In so many ways, TJ Ballantyne is a classic Ken Loach hero: a working-class, middle-aged man trying to simply eke out a dignified living, but meeting obstacles at each turn — a victim of unforgiving social realities that leave people like him in the dust.
Like many of these Loach protagonists, TJ can't get a break — even from gravity, as when he tries to fix the wooden letter “K” that rests above the Old Oak, the dilapidated pub he runs in a former mining town
