Sorry We Missed You
Zeitgeist Films | Release Date: March 4, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah HagiMar 5, 2020
Because the director weaves in enough scenes to show how deeply this family cares for one another, it never feels voyeuristic in its sadness but true to reality. This isn’t about emotional manipulation or poverty porn, it’s about showing a family as a whole. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 17, 2019
It’s fierce, open and angry, unironised and unadorned, about a vital contemporary issue whose implications you somehow don’t hear on the news. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 17, 2019
A drama of such searing human empathy and quotidian heartbreak that its powerful climactic scenes actually impede your breathing. Read full review
91
Original-CinLiam LaceyMar 9, 2020
The mostly non-professional cast do a credible job of depicting a family growing progressively more anxious under increasing pressure. Read full review
91
The Film StageEd FranklMay 30, 2019
Sorry We Missed You is, simply, one of his best films that links the personal and the political. Read full review
91
The PlaylistBradley WarrenMay 17, 2019
As typical as it may sound from the outside, tender and devastating in turn, “Sorry We Missed You” is essential viewing. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMar 4, 2020
Well-researched and highly detailed in how it lays bare the empty promises of the gig economy and the ruthless techno-feudalism of e-commerce, Sorry We Missed You is a movie that will infuriate you. But what makes it one of Loach’s best isn’t just its rage (which is plentiful) but its compassion (which is overwhelming). Read full review
90
The New York TimesWesley MorrisMar 4, 2020
There’s no way for Loach to have gone smaller. When the movie’s over, you have, indeed, witnessed a tragedy, just not the usual kind. Nobody dies. No one goes to prison (there is one police-station visit unlike any I’ve seen). But life: that’s the tragedy, what it takes to get by, what it takes be just a little bit happy — for one lousy meal. Read full review
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 17, 2019
Another intimate and powerful drama about what’s going on in people’s everyday lives. ... Loach stages all of this with supreme confidence and flow. Read full review
90
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 17, 2019
An angry skewering of today’s gig economy as well as a moving drama about a loving family on the verge of implosion which is easily is one of Loach’s very best films. Read full review
89
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpMay 7, 2020
Loach knows there are heavy restraints on art to affect meaningful change in the world. But he’s also aware of the kinship between art and activism: How art can educate people, and agitate them, and perhaps lead them to make more responsible choices in their personal lives. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiMar 11, 2020
As you might be able to discern, this is not an easy film, but it is a brilliant film, and one that encompasses an aspect of the contemporary world with both grace and fisticuffs. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comNell MinowMar 4, 2020
Beautifully performed with searing honesty and naturalism by the entire cast, the one reassuring note is that sometimes someone like Loach is there to make sure that stories like these, people like these, are not missed, but seen. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownMar 2, 2020
It’s difficult to imagine a more socially engaged or powerful condemnation of the exploitative gig economy than Ken Loach’s latest. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMar 5, 2020
The fact that Laverty and Loach take their cues from research and interviews keeps the tension visceral, not artificially heightened. More than usual for these evergreen chroniclers of everyday strife, their politics contextualizes the drama, and vice versa. In their domestic gut-punch of a story, they’ve exposed our new feudalism in a way that feels honest and blisteringly human. Read full review
80
CineVueTom DugginsNov 4, 2019
Occasionally, the script is a little too on-the-nose and expository, but the emotional force of the drama is such that those moments pass by without disturbing the overall impact of the film itself. Read full review
80
Total FilmJordan FarleyNov 1, 2019
Cut from the same cloth as I, Daniel Blake, Loach’s latest is a powerful state-of-the-nation dispatch. Read full review
80
EmpireBeth WebbOct 28, 2019
Though relentless at times, this is a crucial, empathetic rally cry of a film that holds a mirror up to the swelling crisis of the gig economy with admirable intention. Read full review
80
Time OutDave CalhounMay 28, 2019
What’s different is the detail with which Loach and his collaborators examine the effects of work and society on the nuclear family. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 17, 2019
Laverty and Loach have created another hard-hitting, powerful film, spiked with humour and moments of rare but profound humanity. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 1, 2020
Some of Loach’s movies have breathing room, but this isn’t one of them. That’s a feature, not a bug. Sorry We Missed You depicts the vise into which many people are forced to put head, hearts, and lives in order to pay the rent and feed their families. It dramatizes a daily sprint up an escalator that pulls workers backwards. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 31, 2020
In this unsparing but deeply compassionate film, viewers get a chance to see the fatigue, stress and bewilderment of modern life for what they are: not the regrettable side effects of market-driven progress, but the results of cynicism and greed, and the unfathomable human cost of wanting what we want, right now. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 29, 2020
Sorry We Missed You is Loach’s intimate, scathing take on life in the “gig economy,” a family not getting ahead or even holding its own, but swimming as frantically as it can even as they spiral down the drain. It’s his best film in years, and with a resume that includes “My Name is Joe” and “The Angel’s Share,” that’s saying something. Read full review
75
TheWrapSteve PondMay 17, 2019
It is not a subtle film, and its bluntness is occasionally potent but just as often wearying. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnMay 17, 2019
Sorry to Miss You doesn’t break new ground for the filmmaker, but it radiates a timeliness that suggests an old-fashioned Ken Loach lament matters more than ever. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearMar 4, 2020
To watch Sorry We Missed You is to realize that, despite its dedication to showing how people live and love and work (and work, and work, and work) in everyday Britain, this is a story that goes far beyond the United Kingdom. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 17, 2019
For a good long while, anyway, it does offer the kind of involving quotidian texture that Loach excels at when he’s not simply steering the steamroller over his characters to make a point about society’s ills. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeNov 4, 2019
Time and again, scenes of back-breaking struggle end with the screen fading to black, as if the film itself is simply too tired to go on or hanging its head in empathetic shame. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 18, 2019
As a stripped-down, minutely detailed portrait of the daily grind as back-breaking Sisyphean ordeal, “Sorry We Missed You” is engrossing and bluntly persuasive. I was less convinced by the family dynamics. Read full review
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