Dirty Pretty Things

Director Stephen Frears (The Grifters and High Fidelity) escorts us through the human drama and noirish underbelly of immigrant-inundated London, in which greed, bureaucratic red tape and desperation intertwine and perpetuate a black market in human organs. Chiwetel Ejiofor gives an excellent performance as the statuesque, saintly Nigerian physician who double-shifts as cabbie and night clerk. His morals and professional ethics are challenged when he stumbles into a nocturnal swap meet where hotel rooms are used as makeshift operating rooms and such healthy, highly valued body parts as kidneys are traded for forged passports. The film features Amelie’s Audrey Tautou as a Turkish maid and Sergi López as a Spanish conspirator.