Liam

Director Stephen Frears and writer Jimmy McGovern recount the tribulations of an Irish family in 1930s Liverpool when Dad (Ian Hart) loses his job at the local shipyard and becomes easy prey for the braying streetcorner fascists blaming their troubles on foreigners and Jews. Telling the story obliquely from the viewpoint of the 7-year-old son Liam (Anthony Borrows), McGovern and Frears make us (figuratively) lean forward to understand the characters, and the truth is they’re hardly worth the trouble. We’ve seen all this before—the fecklessness of Irish manhood while their women hold home and hearth together—and here the characters wander awfully close to stereotypes. But Frears’ movies are always worth seeing, and within the shopworn limits of the script he and his actors make the most of things.