This is England

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Shenan and I saw a trailer for This is England back earlier this year when we saw The Ten. I can't say it intrigued me very much, but Shenan seemed really excited to see it. I tried to muster up some enthusiasm, but when I found out that it was directed by the guy who did Dead Man's Shoes, I lost what little interest I had stirred up.

Shane Meadow's Dead Man's Shoes has the distinction of being, of the glut of revenge-themed movies to come out in the last 4 or 5 years, probably the worst one I've seen. Really, just a boring fucking mess of a movie that fails to tap into both the inherent excitement/entertainment of the revenge-drama genre, and the dark-nature-of-man philosophical element. And I think Paddy Considine is a good actor, but he has to be the least convincing badass ever. Seriously.

I mean, just last night I was flipping around the TV with my dad, and we caught part of an 80's movie called Eye of the Tiger. It was a revenge movie where Gary Busey goes against a biker gang that killer his wife. At one part, he ties a wire across a street between two light poles, and the bikers ride into and it cuts their head off and then you see one of the heads roll around in slow motion for a while. Later, he stages a raid on the bikers' headquarters using a truck with built in machineguns, while his friend flies over in a biplane dropping TNT on them.

What I'm trying to say is, as fucking stupid as Eye of the Tiger is, it's a better movie than Dead Man's Shoes. At least it's kind of funny. And Gary Busey is, you know, actually an acceptable actor to play a revenge-obsessed nutcase. Also, it uses Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" as its theme, always a plus.

Right, well. Shenan still really wanted to see This is England, so I put it on the ol' Netflix queue, because I'm a good boyfriend like that. Also, I love movies, so I always try to watch them with an open mind and optimism.

And it turns out that This is England is actually a really good movie. I'm happy I saw it.

It starts as a pretty effective coming of age type story of a lonely kid named Shaun. It's the early 80's, and Shaun falls in with a group of punks. They are maybe not the best role models in terms of the drinking and the delinquency, but they are basically good kids who provide Shaun his first sense of belonging and acceptance.

That is, until the movie takes a darker turn. The group is sort of over-taken by a tough, scary but also somewhat charismatic skinhead named Combo. And Combo brings with him a racist doctrine that seems to lend a sense of purpose to the young, lost and easily influenced Shaun. Before you know it, they are threatening the Pakistani kids in the neighborhood, graffiti-ing up the streets and assaulting the foreign shop owners.

The guy who plays Combo is great. The filmmakers could have made his character a monster, but Meadows and actor Stephen Graham flesh him out into a real person. He is capable of violence and hatred, but he has a sort of tenderness with his friends, and the movie does a good job of showing where his anger comes from, and how it has become so misdirected. This was a smaller, foreign movie, and I guess it technically came out overseas last year, so I don't think Graham will get any awards recognition. But at the Dan Oscars, he's a serious contender for Best Supporting Actor 2007.

Shaun and Combo, I suspect, are meant to be parallel characters, with Shaun representing Combo as a child. They even look alike. So the film shows you how a young kid, looking for acceptance, might fall into this kind of lifestyle, and also shows how he might turn out when he's older. Yet Meadows is basically an optimist, and he presents some hope for Shaun's redemption at the end.

So my chief complaints are two:

1) They use some documentary footage of cultural events, especially the war going on at the time. I think it's to show how this subculture is a product of the cultural climate of the times, but I'm not sure the movie really earns the right to the power of these images. I mean, I don't know, maybe Meadows staged the footage. But if not, those are real dead dudes he's showing, and I'm not sure that really ties into his film. It's not offensive so much as maybe it tries to imbue some importance in his movie that's not really there.

2) I didn't much like the end. I don't think Meadows really knew how to bring closure to his story, so he just kind of ends it with an homage to The 400 Blows. I think the movie deserved a little better.

Still, this is a damn good movie, and worth your time. If you don't have too much trouble deciphering heavy British accents, you should check this one out.