Mark Colin Firth is a city banker who, after sealing a big fortune, lives with his pregnant wife Laura Emilia Fox in a spacious, upper-middle-class neighborhood. Despite his financial success, he initially refuses to help a beggar in an underground station, a small act that gnaws at him later as guilt and discontent creep in. When he encounters the same homeless man again, he offers him £100, and this impulsive gesture sparks a shift in his outlook. He resolves to use his wealth to aid the poor and even volunteers as an outreach worker. Yet as the story unfolds, this newfound generosity begins to feel like a retreat from his privileged life and a way to escape the pressures of his marriage, leaving him feeling trapped and frightened by the world he inhabits.
Robert [Robert Carlyle] is released from prison and moves into a hostel in Swiss Cottage, where he crosses paths with Michelle [Anne-Marie Duff], a pregnant woman who has been relocated with her young daughter to protect them from an abusive husband. As their lives intersect, they form a wary but compelling connection, while Robert continues to search for his mother, whom he hasn’t seen in years.
In the same hostel, a Nigerian immigrant family threads its way through the daily grind of survival. Yemi [David Oyelolo] is a journalist who works in a restaurant, his wife Itshe [Nikki Amuka Bird] keeps a house, and their daughter adds another layer of urgency to their ambitions. They are desperate to raise £5,000 to bring Yemi’s father from Nigeria to London before political gangs who forced their emigration close in on him. The family’s struggle to keep their father safe and together against mounting dangers becomes a counterpoint to Mark’s evolving moral experiments.
Mark begins to collaborate with Sally [Julia Davis], the social worker who placed Michelle in the hostel, and he helps to secure a room for Zoe [Nichola Burley], a 17-year-old runaway, giving her a sense of stability amid the chaos. He grows close to Zoe, forming a bond that is both protective and complicated. One night, Zoe makes a bold advance and kisses him, but Mark refuses and returns home to Laura, who seems distressed by his frequent absences and convinced that he is having an affair.
Meanwhile, Robert learns that his mother has died while he was behind bars, a revelation that drives him to pull away from Michelle. The tension between Mark’s domestic life and the increasingly entangled lives of those at the hostel comes to a head during a tense dinner in a restaurant, where Mark tries to explain the distance that has grown between him and Laura and to apologize for his neglect. Afterward, as they drive home, Mark narrowly avoids hitting Robert, who is making his way back to the hostel. Incensed by the near-miss, Robert follows them and, in a moment of brutal resolve, stabs Mark to death at the entrance to the home.
In the end, the film threads together issues of guilt, class, and the fragility of human connections. Mark’s uneasy quest for meaning through charity exposes the fault lines in his sheltered life, while the people he touches—Robert, Michelle, the immigrant family, Zoe, Sally—reveal the complex, sometimes dangerous consequences of crossing personal boundaries. The tragedy that unfolds forces Laura to confront the consequences of a life built on appearance and wealth, and it leaves the viewer with a stark meditation on what it means to be truly compassionate in a world where fear and danger loom just beneath the surface.
