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After surviving a perilous journey from Mexico to the US, Maya (Padilla) enlists the help of her hard-working sister Rosa (Carrillo) to secure a job among other immigrant cleaners with a non-union cleaning agency in a downtown office block. A fated meeting with Sam (Adrien Brody), a committed activist, leads to a guerrilla-style manoeuvre against their employers for standard union benefits. It is a fight which carries the risk of the loss of livelihoods and deportation from the US.
Based on the real life Justice For Janitors campaign in 1990, Ken Loach's first foray into American production (his shooting style remains relatively unaltered) is a typically committed, and politically and socially aware film about ordinary human dignity in the face of corporate might and indifference. As ever, the director draws naturalistic performances from a largely untried cast with Padilla - in her acting debut - revealing the spirit and defiance which characterised the workers' struggle and the plight of those eking out a living in a foreign and often hostile land.
Paul Laverty's script veers towards the simplistic and makes a few too many concessions to the glib and sentimental (the Latin American score is also a tad over-played). "Bread and Roses" (which takes its title from a revolutionary slogan) is nonetheless an impassioned work of integrity and a human drama of observation, insight, and great import.
