StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

jjvmadden This DVD had been resting on my shelf for some months - I kept putting off viewing it because I feared it would be a depressing watch. On the contrary, I found it to be hugely involving and, at times, extremely funny. It is incredibly moving (you will have to have a pretty hard heart not to cry at some scenes) but the eye-opening and potentially 'worthy' message is communicated with a humanity that is motivating and positive rather than simply depressing.Nick Broomfield tells the story with subtle skill. The illusion of documentary reality is almost perfect but this does not distance the viewer from the characters - we enter into their thoughts and feelings partly through the excellent and subtle use of music and partly from utterly convincing performances.

davideo-2 STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning When 23 illegal Chinese cockle pickers drowned on the shores of Morcombe Bay in 2004, it exposed a dark, organized criminal underworld that most of us are probably vaguely aware of but blissfully turn a blind eye to. A secret, controlled network between organized gangs here and in places like China. This film follows the story of real life illegal Ai Qin, who travels to Britain from China in a sealed box in the back of a lorry in order to provide a better life for her son. But when she arrives in the UK, the only thing she finds waiting is domineering slave masters, disgusting living conditions and awful jobs with low pay. It all carries on with no solution until the night of the ill-fated MB disaster, which she was one of the few lucky enough to survive.Nick Broomfield, of Kurt and Courtney fame, has gone to pain-staking lengths to dramatize an imagined drama of what likely happened on the night of the Morcambe Bay cockle-picking disaster, staging a painfully authentic and believable tale that pulls no punches and tells it exactly like it is. All the cast, headed by real life immigrant Qin, pull off honest and earthly performances in a depressing and hopeless tale with some surprising little dashes of humour here and there that perk things up a bit. The only bum note is the unfairly sympathetic tone Broomfield chooses to accompany his film, tugging at our heart strings with the information of the immigrants spending six months on their journey to the UK mostly concealed in boxes, how most of them will never see their families again, how the British government still refuses to help the families back in China and how awful it all is. Poverty must be an awful thing, but these people did come over to our country unlawfully, taking jobs with forged documents that belonged to unemployed British people, and must have had some idea of the risks involved. To try and imply that our government should help when they were offered no protection or right to work here in the first place does seem a bit over the top to me. It is a very tragic tale all round, though, and one Broomfield, and his cast made up of other illegal immigrants (performance or re-enactment?) have brought to life quite powerfully. ****

Melissa Rand The title of Nick Broomfield's new film is deliberately ambiguous; ghosts being the disparaging term the Chinese use to describe white westerners and (possibly) a reference to the invisibility of poorly paid, unprotected non-British workers who work in slave conditions in the food industry.Three years ago such workers made the news, briefly, when 23 illegal Chinese immigrants drowned in Morecambe Bay while digging for cockles late one evening. As the waters rose around them, they rang their families to say goodbye, unaware they'd have been better off ringing 999.Their deaths inspired the notorious Broomfield to make a film in which he re-enacts the events leading up to the disaster. In this he is assisted by a cast of amateurs, many of whom are themselves illegal immigrants, and the film's star Ai Qi Lin, a non-professional, whom we follow through various low-skilled jobs in the food industry in a bid to pay back the $25,000 she borrowed from 'Snakeheads' to smuggle her into the country.There are times when she must wonder why she bothered, forced as she is to live in a two-bedroom house with 11 other Chinese immigrants, all of whom are sworn at and spat on by their neighbours. The landlord is no better: he overcharges them.And yet, for all that., despite the horrific ending, Ghosts isn't entirely bereft of hope. After all, if nothing else, its impact is such that it should force us all to question our own appetite for cheap food and embarrass supermarkets into altering the way their products are produced.

itsacharliebrownchristma I went to see this movie without really knowing much about it beyond that it was the story of the cockle pickers tragedy, and I left the theatre feeling utterly empty and shocked. It is an incredibly moving piece of work, cast by non-professionals, who I thought did a great job. The movie at times has a documentary feel about it because it is very natural, no special effects of fancy lighting, and the ordinariness of the household and factory scenes convey the grimness of the workers' existence.The music is very apt as it has an Oriental dreamlike quality about it, which made me think that the workers probably spend their humdrum lives daydreaming about being back in China with their families.It was a depressing movie for me as it casts us British people in a bad, but not unrealistic, light, and here we see some parts of British culture that most of us feel uncomfortable with - we love getting cheap supermarket food but don't really want to know how it gets to our shelves.I really recommend this movie to everyone, but warn you that it is a very powerful, affecting movie that will stay with you for the rest of the day. I almost felt like crying at the end, and it has been a long time since a movie made me do that. In fact, I felt so upset when I left the theatre that I made myself go to see another movie just one hour later to clear my head (that movie being the truly awful 'Epic movie').This movie will make you feel bad and good all at the same time, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.