5. My Name Is Joe
Joe is a likeable unemployed Glaswegian man who happens to be an ex-alcoholic. His pride and joy is the football team he assembled from poor, mainly unemployed men. He meets Sarah, a health worker and the two start a tentative relationship. Sarah finds it hard to adapt to the poverty of Joe's lifestyle. He helps out a football team mate - Liam - who owes a heroin dealer a substantial amount of money. In the process, he sees everything that he built up since his last drink fall down around him. A realistic approach to poverty, alcoholism and drug addiction, Ken Loach, as usual, packs a lot of heart breaking action into the film. Joe is an intensely likeable guy and you really want him to succeed as he goes around with his football team, injecting a bit of happiness into the dour lives around him. The ending - dealing with relapse - shows what a blight alcohol is in people's lives. Had Joe been sober, he would not have treated Liam in the way that he did leading to Liam's suicide. The whole thing is a terrible tragedy fuelled by the demon that is alcohol.