by Davie Archibald 
Sweet Sixteen is the latest film from the socialist film-making pair - director Ken Loach and scriptwriter Paul Laverty.
A companion piece to their last Glasgow based venture, My Name is Joe, it tells the tale of Liam (Martin Compston) a young guy from Greenock approaching his sixteenth birthday.
Liam's trying to help out his heroin-addicted mother who is due to be released from Corton Vale.
He gets involved in numerous scams to raise cash to buy a caravan that they can live in.
He's also trying to patch things up with his half-sister Chantelle (Annmarie Fulton).
In his increasingly dodgy deals he's aided and abetted by his sidekick Pinball, (William Ruane) as they graduate from punting smuggled cigarettes to offloading heroin.
The film has picked up numerous awards - for Laverty's tight script and Compston's brilliant acting and it's worth seeing for that alone.
There are few films as hard-hitting as Sweet Sixteen.
Most British cinema struggles, unsuccessfully, to emulate the formulaic product of Hollywood - witness the recent collapse of Film Four.
But since the sixties, Loach has always tried to do something different.
In this film he strives to represent the lives of working class people in Greenock, an area plagued by poverty and bad housing.
It's an area that Labour will tell us has only got better under his government, but people who live there know the reality.
There's not a lot of successful social inclusion going on in this film.
Ken Loach has previously produced a number of films that have successfully brought to life the conditions facing many working class people.
Sweet Sixteen does not set out to answer any questions about how things can be changed.
But it must make us wonder why so may lives are simply allowed to be wasted at such an early age.
It is compelling viewing and a definite must-see for anybody with even half a social conscience.