J Paul Johnson
The ironically titled documentary film Bad Patriots brings together two mostly-canceled icons of the British Left—politician Jeremy Corbyn and filmmaker Ken Loach—in dialogue with the film’s maker, Victor Fraga, in an attempt to reclaim their cultural relevance and rewrite the dominant narrative that has marginalized both. Anyone aligned with their causes will surely find The Bad Patriots a convincing, even necessary film; the more conservative and even mainstream media is likely to continue on its own path. Fraga’s film—made with more passion and fire than resources or finesse—-astutely gives the two elder statesmen of Britain’s liberal left a platform for the views that have left them largely marginalized.
Loach, now 88, is a social-realist and documentary filmmaker with impeccable credentials. He’s made over 60 films, many of them addressing social woes in the U.K. (1966’s Cathy Come Home and 1967’s Poor Cow, to name two) and labor rights in particular (1991’s Riff-Raff and 2001’s The Navigators). His lyrical, tender Kes (1969) was voted the seventh greatest British film of the 20th century and among the BFI’s 100 Greatest Films of All Time, and two other of of his films—The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016)—received the Palme d’Or at Cannes, making Loach the only British filmmaker and one of just ten ever to have won the award twice.
Corbyn has been a member of British Parliament for since 1983, having served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020 before being ousted in 2024. In 2017, he narrowly lost the General Elections for Prime Minister to incumbent Theresa May. Now unaffiliated and serving in Parliament as an independent, Corbyn, 73, continues to advocate for socialist, anti-war, and anti-poverty causes.
Filmmaker Victor Fraga, born and raised in Brazil before emigrating to Britain for most of his adult life, watched his home country’s democracy begin to collapse in 2016 when a parliamentary coup took place and a new president was installed. That episode formed the content of an earlier documentary, The Coup d’État Factory in 2023. Realizing that his home country’s mainstream media was equally culpable in Brazil’s turn toward authoritarianism, he turned his eye to Britain, where he saw similar events unfolding. Coming into conversation with both Corbyn and Loach—two men who had been vilified by Britain’s conservative media—Fraga undertook this project, The Bad Patriots, to give them the platform necessary to correct public perception.
The film consists almost entirely of three separate interviews—first Loach, then Corbyn, then the two of them interviewed together by Fraga. Where Fraga excels is as an interviewer: it’s clear that the conversations are robust, earnest, and thoughtful. Loach at 88 and Corbyn a decade and half younger are both spry, vital, sharp-witted men who see through the right’s manipulation of the media and speak with passion to their causes. To Fraga’s credit, he lets Loach and Corbyn’s words guide The Bad Patriots’ developing argument.
The three interviews—especially the last of them, bringing Corbyn and Loach into dialogue with each other and Fraga—are insightful and informative. They together constitute the film’s raison d’être, giving it its fire and focus. Loach’s interviews are intercut, a little bluntly, with clips of a few of his films, which seems necessary given that despite his prolificacy he remains less well known outside his native Britain—and to Americans, practically unknown. The clips from films appear with no introduction, not even a simple lower-thirds chyron identifying them; perhaps viewers already well versed in his filmography wouldn’t need them.
The same is true whether it’s clips from Loach’s films or quotes from media sources vilifying his and Corbyn’s politics: in general, there is little identification of the secondary or supporting content. Quotes are delivered with bombast by Adrian Bracken in a mock-stuffy-old-Brit stage voice—a technique aiming for irreverent cheek but that tires with repetition. These quotes are all genuine, but they are never sourced explicitly, so it’s hard not to wonder about their origins. The Bad Patriots forgoes what a more traditional approach to participatory-activist documentary might, in terms of culling archival video of the events being discussed, of other experts, or print reportage. Instead of the typical pre-production work (gathering supporting content, ensuring media rights, assembling expository segments, interviewing secondary experts, and the like), these inserts of voice-over constitute the bulk of what’s heard when Loach and Corbyn don’t have the floor.
The Bad Patriots is an activist film, and a spirited one at that, with its first allegiance to its cause. The film’s strengths, the interviews themselves, are excellent: challenging, effusive, and far-ranging. Corbyn and Loach present not only a vigorous case for themselves but against the British media’s culpability in marginalizing the country’s once-thriving liberal left. I’d wholeheartedly recommend anyone to stop what they are doing and lend these smart and accomplished gentlemen their ear. You might not agree with every choice The Bad Patriots makes along the way, but listening in as Corbyn and Loach present their analysis makes will make for an invaluable, even inspiring experience.
