Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

erago-1 when I watch this film it's sit on my chest and never go. It is true classic. Football scene, the teacher beating students in classroom scene was unique. it is in three best films that I've ever seen. 1. fiddler on the roof, 2. kes, 3. Ah güzel istanbul. and I have to say again Ken Loach is Dickens in cinema.

holstenpils20 I remember when we first got a video in the early 80s and we'd only just worked out how to use it. One night Kes came on the telly and me and my brother taped it. We were about 9 and 11 years old. We watched that tape for years over and over again. We knew the whole film word for word from start to finish. My mum and dad are both from Barnsley, My dad went to school with Barry Hines. Eventually that tape either got lost or broken. Years later when I was grown up, Kes came on the telly one night so I sat down to watch it. I couldn't believe it when it came on, it had been dubbed over, the voices were different and the accents were nothing like as strong as the original. In the end I had to turn it off. I was gutted. Since then I have borrowed it on Video and then bought it on DVD and both times on the video and the DVD it is the dubbed version. You can not get the original anywhere anymore but nobody ever mentions this and I really don't understand it because it spoils the whole film. Surely there is somebody out there what remembers the original and realises that the DVD version has different voices put on. In some places it is the same but in most places it has been dubbed and it sounds awful. I just wish I could find the original version somewhere. I know that most people reading this will think that their DVD is the original version and wont have a clue what I am talking about because for some reason nobody apart from me and my brother seem to have noticed which I find hard to believe. If you own the film on DVD then I assure you it is NOT the original voices.

bandw The story follows Billy Casper, a teenager in a lower-class family in an English mining town. Billy lives with his single mother and older brother, who works in the mines. There is a crushing bleakness to Billy's life: he is made fun of at school, forced to sleep with his brother in a narrow bed, mostly ignored by his mother, browbeaten by teachers who verge on the sadistic, and dominated by his brother.One day while walking in the country Billy spots a kestrel's nest and is fascinated by it to the point of poaching one of the young chicks (maybe he was attracted to the sense of freedom the birds had that he so sadly lacked?). He goes to the local library and steals a book on falconry which he uses to train the bird--one of the interesting aspects of the movie is in following the steps in that training process. The bird deserves high billing for his performance as well as director Loach, since I am sure that filming the scenes with the bird required many takes. The scenes with Billy and the bird are nicely filmed and are a bright spot in the drabness.The highlight of the film comes, interestingly enough, in Billy's English class where the teacher is pressing him to tell something about is life. After much reluctance and shrugging of shoulders Billy gets up and tells about his experiences with the kestrel. His account is so sincere and heartfelt that the students were transfixed, as was I. A truly wonderful scene. The teacher is so impressed with the story that he comes out to watch Billy and the bird in action. This teacher is the only person in the movie who treats Billy with any fondness or respect.In spite of Billy's rather dreary existence there is a certain resilience to the lad which is captured beautifully by the novice actor David Bradley. Billy doesn't know what he wants to do when he leaves school, but he is dead set against going down in the mines. But the movie ends on a note that makes you feel that Billy has been so trapped by circumstance that the mines are where he is likely headed.Not being a Brit I found the English subtitles on the DVD helpful.This movie is a total refutation to those who say that if you do not succeed in life, it's your own fault. It supports the statistic that the best predictor of someone's success is the success of his or her parents.

Rindiana Most film-makers who deal with a story featuring a boy/girl and his/her pet go for the heartstrings by underlining both the kid's and the animal's cuteness. The narrative structure holding this picturesque idyll together mainly consists of predictable melodramatic incidents that endanger this relationship.One of Loach's best pics undermines this soapy approach by intensifying the unaffectedly portrayed boy-pet relationship through the unflinchingly bleak description of the boy's surroundings. Kes is not just a beloved falcon, he represents a way to endure social hardships.This earnest, heartfelt drama is a true gem of British working-class cinema.8 out of 10 funny football matches