My Name Is Joe cover art

My Name Is Joe Details

1998 DVD Certificate 15.gif
  • Rated:
  • 70
  • from 3516 members

Peter Mullan (ORPHANS, MISS JULIE) won the Best Actor award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Joe Kavanagh, a recovering alcoholic in his late thirties. Like half the people in his impoverished Glasgow neighborhood, he's unemployed and struggles to get by between odd jobs and the dole, along with coaching .. Read more

Starring Peter Mullan, Louise Goodall, David McKay, Gary Lewis
Director Ken Loach
Genres Drama

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My Name Is Joe cover art

My Name Is Joe

Peter Mullan (ORPHANS, MISS JULIE) won the Best Actor award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Joe Kavanagh, a recovering alcoholic in his late thirties. Like half the people in his impoverished Glasgow neighborhood, he's unemployed and struggles to get by between odd jobs and the dole, along with coaching a ragtag soccer team largely consisting of delinquents. As difficult as his life may seem, he's buoyed by a willed optimism that he realizes is the only alternative to reverting to his addiction. When he's caught by a niggling unemployment official while doing the odd wallpapering job for social worker-nurse Sarah Downie (Louise Goodall), she helps to keep him from losing his sinecure. The two soon begin a tentative relationship, but Joe remains connected to his former life through his young friend Liam (David McKay), an ex-con and former addict. Mullan is utterly believable as another of social realist director Ken Loach's characters attempting to negotiate the tough climate of 1980s Great Britain.

Starring Peter Mullan, Louise Goodall, David McKay, Gary Lewis, Anne Marie Kennedy
Director Ken Loach
Studio FILM 4
Run time DVD: 1 hr 40 mins
Certificate DVD Certificate 15.gif
Genres Drama
Language English
Hearing-impaired English
Subtitles English
Released DVD: 01 May 2002
Production year: 1998
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (7) of My Name Is Joe

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  • Ken Loach at his best in this comedy about a middle-aged man avoiding a nervous breakdown, with help from his idol Eric Cantona. read more »

    • Darren Bignell, 
    • LOVEFiLM

  • Most helpful member's review of My Name Is Joe

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  • 13 out of 13 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    Heart of Glasgow

    This film reverberates with echoes of Glasgow that travel brochures never talk about. Men just like Joe are everywhere and nowhere.

    It's hysterically funny at times but the sour-plumes of life are never far from the surface. You will not need sub-titles to understand this film. Just look in Peter Mullan's eyes.

      • Karin Grant from Glasgow, Scotland
      • Posted 25 Mar 2004 23:18

  • Most recent members' review of My Name Is Joe

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  • 7 out of 8 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    My Name Is Joe

    Ken Loach films are not for everyone. Perhaps they are not for anyone at the end of a stressful day. There is no escapism or eye candy. The sharp end of working class existence is shoved in front of your face and you are expected to keep your brain switched on. The themes explored are often similar and generally bleak. But there is also a wealth of real human experience, emotion and humour. These films make demands of their audience but reward your engagement with a truly cathartic experience.

    The central characters in “My Name Is Joe” are warm, vulnerable, flawed, complex, and real. They all have histories, but we can only guess at most of them. I certainly found myself wanting to know these people more intimately. I was also hoping for a happy ending, while aware that this would be a cop out. Loach’s “Raining Stones” covers similar territory to this film. In both, a basically good man’s life is under threat from an “evil” moneylender. “Raining Stones” does produce a sort of happy ending: an accidental killing rewards the “good” and punishes the “bad”. You can just about swallow this once, but to have tried it again would have been too much. Here the outcome is far muddier. There is tragedy, but still hope of redemption for at least some of the protagonists. The moneylender carries on regardless, untouched, as they do.

      • Liam from Halesworth
      • Posted 27 Oct 2003 10:32

  • News and features

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    Looking for Eric

    Looking For Eric

    • 11 Jun 2009

    Right, so, first things first: Eric Cantona is actually IN this film – it’s not just footie footage, or some clever CGI jiggery-pokery to make it look like he was there. I rather doubt that director Ken Loach has much truck with all that computerised mucking about anyway. Because this is very definitely a Ken Loach film. There’s the kitchen-sink realism of Carla’s Song or My Name Is Joe and the unflinching script of The Wind That Shakes The Barley, as we meet Eric... Read more

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Rating breakdown

3,516 Member ratings
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318
  • 90
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  • 80
799
  • 70
732
  • 60
584
  • 50
313
  • 40
153
  • 30
120
  • 20
96
  • 10
56

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      • Peter Mullan (ORPHANS, MISS JULIE) won the Best Actor award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Joe Kavanagh, a recovering alcoholic in his late thirties. Like half the people in ...