All or Nothing is a 2002 British drama film written and directed by Mike Leigh and starring Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville. Like much of Leigh's work, the film is set in present-day London, and depicts three working-class families and their everyday lives.
Synopsis
The film begins with a day nearing its end. Rachel, the daughter in the first family, is shown working in a nursing home. Phil, her father, is seen driving people around in his minicab. Penny, Rachel's mother, is shown working as a cashier at a Safeway store alongside Maureen, the mother in the second family. When Penny leaves work, she cycles home to find her 18-year-old son Rory in a fight with a local boy for taking his football.
Rory is a lazy, obese, ill-mannered teenager who neither goes to school nor has a job. Complications with his obesity arise when after an altercation with a gang of youths playing piggy in the middle, he runs out of breath, begins to hyperventilate and is hospitalized after suffering a heart attack.
The second family consists of Maureen, another cashier at Safeway, and her daughter Donna, a waitress at a cafe. Donna becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Jason despite being on the pill, and this leads to a heated argument among the three characters.
The third family consists of Ron, who also drives a minicab, his unemployed teenage daughter Samantha, and his wife Carol, an unemployed alcoholic. Samantha shows interest in both Jason and Craig, a taciturn young man who seems to stalk her.
Dungeness in Kent was used as a film location for the scene where Phil visits the coast to contemplate his problems.[2]
Reception
It was well received by critics and audiences alike, receiving an 82% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 92 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The critical consensus states that "All or Nothing's depiction of the working-class can be depressingly bleak, but the performances are wonderfully true to life."[3] It has a 72/100 average on Metacritic.[4] The film holds an average B+ grade on Yahoo! Movies.
