Run with the crowd, stand alone, you decide.
From writer/director Shane Meadows (Room for Romeo Brass, 24 7, Once upon a time in the Midlands) comes This is England, the must-see story of a summertime school holiday, those long weeks between terms where life changing events can take place.
It's 1983 and school is out. 12-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is an isolated lad growing up in a grim coastal town, whose father has died fighting in the Falklands war. Over the course of the summer holiday he finds fresh male role models when those in the local skinhead scene take him in. With his new friends Shaun discovers a world of parties, first love and the joys of Dr Martin boots. Here he also meets Combo (Stephen Graham), an older, racist skinhead who has recently got out of prison. As Combo's gang harass the local ethnic minorities, the course is set for a rite of passage that will hurl Shaun from innocence to experience.
Special Agent Matti
Apples and pears. Cut you up, geezer. Leave it out. Know what I mean? Sorted.
This is England purports to be an historical drama and I'm feeling a bit dodgy about the way that the skinheads are portrayed. It's as if they're a normal bunch of kids dressing up to annoy their parents who are then infected by hardened criminals with psychotic episodes who drive them into frenzies of racist violence. I'm thinking that the aggression of the skinheads and the violence of the racists went hand-in-hand. (Punk music was to blame, of course, with its anti-establishment values, its non-conformist attitudes and its celebration of anti-fashion - bloody rock and roll devil music.) Still, it's a hardish-core look at a movement that had its day in the sun, although Romper stomper it's not, not with a 12-year-old as the protagonist.
Good but not great.
The biography, drama, UK movie This is England is directed by Shane Meadows and stars Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Jo Hartley.
MA 15+ (Strong themes, strong violence, strong coarse language)
102 minutes (1:42 hours)
Film: 16 August 2007
DVD rental: 5 December 2007
DVD retail: 5 December 2007
