The Angels' Share (Ken Loach, 2012)

Loach continues his slow mellowing, starting in an familiar down-at-heel urban environment with a young Glaswegian man narrowly escaping a prison sentence for GBH, and ending in more optimistic climes. There isn't the usual polemic against the system as such, given that the miscreants sentenced to do community service with him are all victims of their own device: instead, Loach is now content to just set the course for a better tomorrow.
It might be pointed out that fundamental pragmatism still lingers, as it is only through theft that the protagonists are able to win against their circumstances. But then you can never take the social realism wholly out of Loach, and here its background presence really is needed in the blend as the plot relies on some serendipitous licences to have its quartet of bumblers manage to run off with a share of the world's rarest whisky. The director's latest batch of non-professional actors come across naturalistically too, so you sincerely want them to succeed in their little caper.

6/10