Though Ken Loach’s political views are rarely hard to read in his films, his regard for his characters is often more ambiguous. Indeed, he’s less apt to condemn them for their failings than the director’s hardliner reputation might suggest.

Such is the case for the protagonist in It’s a Free World…, his first feature with writer Paul Laverty since 2006’s Palme d’Or–winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley. An intrepid single mom who makes a booming business out of exploiting London’s underclass of undocumented workers, Angie (Kierston Wareing) is both attractive for her feisty energy and repellent for her moral flexibility. Though she clearly feels for some of these less fortunate folk — like the Polish bloke who becomes her lover and the Iranian family she finds living in a freezer van — her ambition trumps any other consideration.

But rather than portray her as a villain, Loach and Laverty paint Angie as just another player who’s savvy enough to know how to make a buck off someone else’s back. She remains fully and convincingly human even when the rest of the movie lacks the same degree of nuance. Though It’s a Free World… falls short of Loach’s best work, the director does something surprising: he humanizes the issue of economic exploitation by focusing not on a victim but a beneficiary.

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