It's never fun to come down on the other side of a movie about such a monumental moment for women's rights, especially considering that I'm a man, but Made in Dagenham works overtime (no pun intended) to craft itself as completely predictable and unabashedly shallow. Without an excellent lead performance from Sally Hawkins, easily one of my favorite actresses, this paint by numbers workers' rights genre template could have been completely unbearable. Hawkins breaths some life into a character written as a caricature alongside countless other caricatures inhabiting the world of 1960s England with its sexist injustices in the way pay was structured in the workplace.
Bob Hoskins, though quite good, is wasted as the manager of 187 women in the Ford Factory in Dagenham who immediate believes in the cause of equal pay because, as he puts it, he and his brothers were raised by a woman who worked hard without getting her fair share. Hawkins plays Rita O'Grady, a mild-mannered worker who finds herself up to the task of spearheading the strike. She needs to rise to the challenge due to the difficult home life of the elected shop steward Connie, played by Geraldine James. While Rita must struggle with fighting for her cause while shirking perceived duties as mother of two children and wife of daft but sweet Eddie, played by Daniel Mays, Connie's husband really does need her considering that he's losing his sanity after dealing with debilitating injuries that stem back from his service in the war.
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