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Dead Man's Shoes (2004, Shane Meadows)
Dead Man's Shoes is a film that I'd been waiting for since it's Premiere at the Edinburgh Festival last year. The buzz was promising - a return to form by Shane Meadows after the messy Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, shot in 3 weeks (for £750,000) and featuring a devastating performance from his friend/actor/collaborator Paddy Considine.
The film concerns Richard (Considine), an ex-soldier who returns with his disabled brother Anthony to the small English town they left 10 years before. He has a score to settle with the local gang, headed by Sonny (ex-British Light Middleweight Champion and onetime foe of Chris Eubank, Gary Stretch), who had drugged and abused Anthony before leaving him for dead in a derelict building.
Thus opens a revenge movie of sometimes quite startling intensity, Considine (who I've been bigging up recently but honestly feel that he's the best actor England has right now) delivers a performance of rare quality - passive/aggressive, subtle, caring, ferocious but always fuelled by one thing: the guilt of not being there when his brother needed him most.
As a director, Meadows isn't shy about referencing the films that influenced Dead Man's Shoes' style - there are echoes of Straw Dogs, Get Carter and even First Blood in the tone but nothing is heavy-handed or blatent. Tony Kebbell is wonderful, underplaying Anthony's vulnerable state when it would have been easy to have done another 'Charlie Babbitt' while Sonny's gang brings some much needed levity (and a few laugh-out-loud comedy scenes) to the show.
It's violent, sure, but as Dead Man's Shoes unfolds, we begin to understand exactly why Richard has been driven towards this state.
"God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and let them into Heaven. I can't live with that."
For me, this is the best British film since Trainspotting, and the more I watch it the more I feel that DMS could surpass Danny Boyle's 1996 landmark.
Not sure of a US release date but there's an R2 DVD containing commentaries, deleted scenes, making of doc, an animated graphic novel and a bittersweet Meadows short (also starring Kebbell) called Northern Soul.
If you can, watch it.
An essential
Website and Trailers
Dead Man's Shoes is a film that I'd been waiting for since it's Premiere at the Edinburgh Festival last year. The buzz was promising - a return to form by Shane Meadows after the messy Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, shot in 3 weeks (for £750,000) and featuring a devastating performance from his friend/actor/collaborator Paddy Considine.
The film concerns Richard (Considine), an ex-soldier who returns with his disabled brother Anthony to the small English town they left 10 years before. He has a score to settle with the local gang, headed by Sonny (ex-British Light Middleweight Champion and onetime foe of Chris Eubank, Gary Stretch), who had drugged and abused Anthony before leaving him for dead in a derelict building.
Thus opens a revenge movie of sometimes quite startling intensity, Considine (who I've been bigging up recently but honestly feel that he's the best actor England has right now) delivers a performance of rare quality - passive/aggressive, subtle, caring, ferocious but always fuelled by one thing: the guilt of not being there when his brother needed him most.
As a director, Meadows isn't shy about referencing the films that influenced Dead Man's Shoes' style - there are echoes of Straw Dogs, Get Carter and even First Blood in the tone but nothing is heavy-handed or blatent. Tony Kebbell is wonderful, underplaying Anthony's vulnerable state when it would have been easy to have done another 'Charlie Babbitt' while Sonny's gang brings some much needed levity (and a few laugh-out-loud comedy scenes) to the show.
It's violent, sure, but as Dead Man's Shoes unfolds, we begin to understand exactly why Richard has been driven towards this state.
"God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and let them into Heaven. I can't live with that."
For me, this is the best British film since Trainspotting, and the more I watch it the more I feel that DMS could surpass Danny Boyle's 1996 landmark.
Not sure of a US release date but there's an R2 DVD containing commentaries, deleted scenes, making of doc, an animated graphic novel and a bittersweet Meadows short (also starring Kebbell) called Northern Soul.
If you can, watch it.
An essential
Website and Trailers