Dirty Pretty Things, a new flick from the staple of Miramax Films which debuted in theatres across America and Europe penultimate Friday is currently garnering rave reviews across the West. The film which stars Nigeria's Chiweta Ejiofor who plays the lead role, Okwe and Sophie Okonedo along other Hollywood (US) and Nottinghill (Britain) stars tells the intriguing story of immigrants dialy experience in Europe. What is more, the moivie is the story of hard-working immigrants who unwittingly become involved in a gruesome scam, the film captures the tribulations of foreigners striving for a better life in their adopted country, as well as the casual evil that patiently waits to corrupt them.

Chicago Tribune movie critic, Michael Wilmington rated the movie high. He welcomes the movie in this season when according to him, "Most modern urban movie thrillers try to overwhelm us with action and pyrotechnics..." For him, Dirty Pretty Things by Stephen Frears "...takes a different, more satisfying approach. It's an exciting but brainy, cross-cultural thriller about modern London and life in a contemporary urban pressure cooker, and it depends more on plot, character and atmosphere than it does on chases and gunfire," he wrote.

New York Post's Megan Lehmann who described that film as "Classy Brit fare," added, "Thank you, Britain, for sending us another smart alternative to the big, dumb and noisy stink bombs that have polluted the summer movie schedule so far.

Part urban thriller, part unorthodox love story, this well-acted portrayal of the shadowy realm occupied by London's illegal immigrants is buoyed by stinging social commentary and a surprising twist of intelligent humor. Megan Lehmann rated Ejiofor's acting very high. "Chiwetel Ejiofor is compelling and sympathetic as Okwe, a sleep-deprived Nigerian exile, living off the grid and working days as a cab driver, nights as a concierge at an ostensibly respectable hotel."

The movie is set within a besieged little community of illegal immigrants from a variety of nations who work in a seedy downtown hotel. These are desperate people hiding from the law while being viciously exploited by their employer. Subject to constant fears of exposure and betrayal, forced to live in shadow and dogged by immigration cops, they're pushed into a twilight world of crime and amorality.

New Yorks Times' Elvis Mitchell said the scriptwriter, Steven Knight who conjured up a television show with a rugged punch of a title, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," deliveres a swift, tangy drama with an equally terse title, pits London's illegal immigrants against the alluring hope of propriety. "There's no lifeline that's a phone call away, either. The immigrants are expendable manpower in the war to man the mops, kitchens and bottom-drawer duties of the world of luxury hotels, where they are unnoticed by the public and underpaid and overworked by their employers," he wrote.

He explained that this understated and sure film is set in a world of survivors, a forgotten group of people struggling to bring in enough income so that they don't become disposable.

The film's plot is simple. At the center of the movie's maelstrom of guilt and fear is a Nigerian doctor named Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) living illegally in London, works two jobs to make ends meet. Okwe, a handsome, spotlessly competent man who left Nigeria for dark reasons, works two essentially menial jobs. During the day he chews betel to stay awake at the wheel of his minicab. At night he mans the front desk of a modest hotel in one of the city's less glamorous neighborhoods. He lives (chastely) with a Turkish friend Senay, played by French actress Audrey Tautou. Senay who dreams of moving on to New York, labors as a chambermaid at the same hotel, a violation of her status as a political refugee. Okwe and Senay are attracted to each other, and at one point must share a small apartment, but they are kept apart by their different religions, customs and languages, not to mention their sweatshop hours.

According to Michael Wilmington, both of them are manipulated by their aptly named boss, Sneaky (played by Sergi Lopez, the superb villain of "With a Friend Like Harry"). The hotel's other employees, who are also under Sneaky's brutal thumb, include likable Japanese prostitute Juliette (Sophie Okonedo) and the burly, cynical Russian doorman Ivan (Zlatko Buric).

Then a chance discovery changes everything. Trying to unclog a stopped toilet in the room used by the resident prostitute, Juliette (Sophie Okonedo), Okwe finds a human heart lodged at the bottom of the bowl. When he presents the specimen to Sneaky (Sergi Ląpez), the hotel manager, he learns that an unthinkable trade is being practiced on his watch. "(Strangers) come to the hotel in the night to do dirty things and in the morning we make things pretty again," the hotel's oily Spanish manager, Sneaky (Sergi Lopez), tells Okwe.

Okwe, who worked as a doctor in his homeland (Nigeria), learns just how dirty the deeds get when he discovers a nasty underground trade in organs for passports that Sneaky is operating out of the hotel and is soon wedged between a rock and a hard place: His inherent decency balks at the exploitative business, but he is hamstrung by his own precarious situation.

What's more, Sneaky makes Okwe an offer he thinks he can't refuse: a visa in exchange for his medical skill. Hounded by IND agents, desperate for cash, yet horrified by the prospect of trafficking in human flesh, Okwe must decide whether he can bear to pay the price of asylum - a choice made more difficult by the fact that Senay is willingly to put her own life on the line for a ticket to the United States.

Wilmington wrote: "Frears and writer Steven Knight whip us through Okwe's whirlwind, insomniac existence with verve and economy. Then a mystery opens up - a seeming murder and mutilation that may have taken place in one of the rooms, leaving a ghastly residue in its bathroom. Gradually, Okwe uncovers more of the sinister doings at the hotel - a gruesome racket run by Sneaky, which, given Okwe's illegal status, he's powerless to reveal to the police. As Okwe discovers more about Sneaky's gangsterism, he and the others are forced more and more into the open, pushed to involve themselves in a conflict that imperils their chances of staying in London -- and perhaps imperils their lives."

For Wilmington, this is a good plot: tight, richly suggestive and an ideal vehicle for Frears. He added that like almost all of Frears' movies, Dirty Pretty Things, a multiple prize-winner in Britain, is canny about both the characters' psychology and the social conditions surrounding them. "It's an intelligent, sensitive piece about real people in harsh, dangerous situations. But it's also a tense thriller of the old kind (like Carol Reed's or Hitchcock's), made with deep skill and a human complexity that keeps us breathlessly pinned to the turns of the plot. By the end of Dirty Pretty Things, we feel - with a good deal of sympathy and conviction - what it's like to experience this kind of besieged life, one step ahead of the law, at the mercy of shady elements."

New Yorks Times Elvis Mitchell corroborated saying that "Portraying Okwe's plight could help to absolve Mr. Knight of the flame-out success of "Millionaire," which placed a planet-sized karmic debt on the writer's shoulders for sparking the reality show glut. This movie is just the opportunity for Mr. Knight to square that account. It is an urban horror story rendered with grim intelligence by the man with the right tools for the job: the British director Stephen Frears."

Nicholas Schager of filmcritic.com says "Dirty Pretty Things is, at its core, a quest for home, for inclusion, and the crazed, half-mad desperation of Okwe and Senay is rooted in the realization that life affords them only three options: perpetual subjugation, death, or escape. Fortunately, Frears has chosen his cast wisely. Native Frenchwoman Tautou is asked to not only speak English but also affect a Turkish accent, and yet the passion and anxiety seen swimming in her saucer-shaped eyes allows us immediate access into Senay's conflicted heart (her dreams center around the white police horses found in New York City). Her admirable performance, a study in quietly concealed disintegration, makes the actress' minor stumbles with the language easily forgivable."

He opines that whereas Tautou infuses Senay with vulnerability and naivet‚, her co-star Ejiofor, embodying a man whose shady past cloaks him in mystery, brings a barely suppressed wildness to Okwe. Little by little, Ejiofor doles out small hints regarding Okwe's motivations, and it's this actorly patience that compels us to remain rooted in the character's dilemma. Even during scenes in which the opportunity for personal revelation is present - the film's primary shortcoming being a schematic script by Steve Knight that programs key moments a bit too conveniently - the actor never provides us with more insight into Okwe than is necessary at the given moment.

"This is also true of Frears, whose sturdy professionalism lends the film a swagger that engenders our confidence in this tale's mixture of romance (between Senay and Okwe), suspense (the duo's revenge scheme), and humor (most memorably found in Okwe's treatment of the cab company boss, and later his friends, for the clap). Despite a story that sometimes teeters unsteadily on the precipice between artfulness and ludicrousness, Frears rarely missteps. Things conclude in an unrealistically neat fashion - why would someone who fled a country under the threat of death think they could suddenly return to it? - but given that Dirty Pretty Things is ultimately characterized by contradictions, it might be a fittingly ironic end to this entertainingly unruly film."

Rex Roberts of Film Journal International opined that "Dirty Pretty Things is a rare accomplishment: Frears manages to sustain the suspense required of an engaging thriller while drawing a believable portrait of real people we care about. To be sure, the premise of the film, based on stories and legends involving organ trafficking, requires viewers to strenuously suspend their disbelief. At the same time, the movie presents a convincing portrait of people living on the margins of society, struggling to keep their dignity, coping with their isolation, acquiescing to their exploitation.

"As well as any working artist, Frears taps into the immigrant experience and multicultural vibe of international cities like London. (The cast of Dirty Pretty Things is as ethnically diverse as a U.N. subcommittee.) He and Knight can be accused of painting their protagonists with too noble a palette - Okwe and Senay are really too good to be true - but they succeed splendidly in framing a moving story inside a rousing yarn."

For Megan Lehmann, with Dirty Pretty Things, Frears has infused a delightfully original screenplay, by first-time scriptwriter Steven Knight with vitality and just a dash of suspense. "Perhaps his master stroke is in depicting the nearly invisible illegals who power the city's service sector as industrious, hopeful individuals, rather than victims of despair."

Wilmington concluded that Dirty Pretty Things is a suspense movie that works bracingly well as a genre thriller while also offering gems of social portraiture and a lacerating expose of current conditions among illegal London aliens. Unflinchingly, "Things" gives us both the dirt and the prettiness, the goodness and the horror - all of which we see mirrored in hero Okwe's handsome, wary face.

Directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight, Dirty Pretty Things is photographed by Chris Menges; edited by Mick Audsley; production designed by Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski. The film's music is by Nathan Larson and is produced by Tracey Seaward, Robert Jones and released Miramax Films starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Okwe, Audrey Tautou as Senay, Sergi Lopez as Sneaky, Sophie Okonedo as Juliette among others.