A veteran of four decades of melodramas with a social conscience, Ken Loach puts in a solid if standard effort on this tale of Maya (the feisty Pilar Padilla), a Mexican woman who first shows her resourcefulness when she gives the slip to the brute who transported her over the border and wants to take his payment in kind. Maya’s sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrillo) gets her a job with a cleaning company that specializes in ripping off immigrant labor, but Maya takes her cue from fiery labor activist and love interest Sam (Adrien Brody) and starts unionizing. It’s Norma Rae by way of El Norte as vivid camerawork and passionate performances overcome Loach’s tendencies toward polemics (Brody’s sanctimoniousness gets irritating) and histrionics (Rosa’s back story verges on bathos).