Leave it to director Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liasons and High Fidelity) to come out of nowhere and deliver one of the very best movies of the year.

In this taut thriller/character study, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a London Taxi Driver by day and hotel desk clerk by night, who stumbles across a sinister plot at his night job.

Dirty Pretty Things is a tough movie to review because I don't want to give the sinister plot away even though many other reviewers have. I went into this picture not knowing what it was about, and this made it all the better.

Frears and his screenwriters have given me a glimpse into something I never knew existed, and they do so with incredible style and grace. Frears' directing style seems to drastically change with each picture, and this is one of the things I like about him so much. With Dirty Pretty Things, he lends a Hitchcockian touch to a thriller about illegal immigrants who will do just about anything to escape their prison-like lives.

Nothing here is sugar-coated, and every character in this movie is humanized, even the call girl whom we really come to care about by the end of the picture (by contrast, I was bothered by the goings-on in Gary Marshall's Pretty Woman).

Anchoring the film are two immigrants played by Audrie Tautou (Amelie) and Chiwetel Ejiofor, two sad souls with hearts full of pain who seem to find solace in each other. Tautou is a beauty and it's hard to look at her and shake shades of Audrey Hepburn. While it may be hard for many to buy her as a Turkish immigrant, it's still a well crafted performance. This is a sympathetic
woman and Tautou portrays her as pure and childlike. Ejiofor really carries the movie with a heavy dose of sympathy and vulnerability. From
the moment we see him on screen, we can feel his pain, and while we don't find out the cause of it until nearly the end of the movie, we never doubt that this man has had a tough life. What I like most about this performance is how internal it is. Ejiofor is very restrained, and as the story progressed I wanted him to fulfill his desires because I cared so much about him.

Dirty Pretty Things could have easily fallen apart. Many moments could Have gone over the top, while others could have been silly and dripping with sentimentality. Thankfully, Frears and his crew never let this happen. Dirty Pretty Things is thrilling, romantic, dark, and brimming with humor (some of it quite black), and it's all punctuated by an ending that, in many ways, is old school Hollywood. In fact, the ending leaves quite an impact, and while it may not be what everyone wants to see, it couldn't have rang more true.

Dirty Pretty Things is a beautifully crafted picture and I really had no idea where it was going. By the end, everything was perfectly resolved and I was left with a sense of sadness, but more importantly, I was left with a sense of hope for these characters. This is an amazing film. See it
before it leaves theaters.