Frears' film a dirty, pretty gem

Stephen Frears eclectic career as a director could easily be compared to a gold-medal figure skater, one whose breathtaking risks are laced with such grace we forget the impact of ice. Smoothly maneuvering from blockbuster Hollywood (High Fidelity) to independent cinema (Liam), Frears is once again the subject of international accolades with his indie hit Dirty Pretty Things. Aptly titled, Frears' film can be more dirty than pretty at times as it explores the means of survival as an immigrant in London. However, as the cryptically coy title also suggests, Frears isn't afraid to find the humor in a rather bleak situation, comic relief being buoyantly timed to keep us from sinking into the abyss. At the heart of Frears' film is … literally, a heart A human heart, to be precise, found clogging the camode in room 515 of the Baltic Hotel.\nWhen Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a hotel clerk, discovers the extracted organ, his horror can only be magnified by the sheer indifference of his boss, hotel manager Juan (Sergi Lopez), known as Sneaky to the crew. \nWelcome to the world of black market organ trading. Dirty Pretty Things was penned by Stephen Knight, who wrote the pilot for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Irony aside, Frears and Knight create a moral complexity in which human decency is a luxury afforded only after survival is guaranteed. And it never is. \nFor Okwe, a Nigerian doctor, and the Turkish Senay (Audrey Tautou), life is not about deciding between right and wrong, but whether your beautiful mouth being used as "stress relief" will ensure your safety at the sweat shop, whether your skills as a surgeon will be exploited by a savage market that could care less. Frears' film is being billed as a thriller and structurally moves as such. But within are all the dirty, pretty things that will challenge your heart and your mind, which make this film worth catching if you can.