This Is England (2007)

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It's fine in a general sense, it recognises the sort of background skins came from. But we didn't love and hug, our only male bonding was fighting together and seeing who would stand with us. Our crew did actually have a black lad who joined us as we went Pakky bashing. Recreational time was spent getting drunk in the pub, where there might be a gig on, the night would end with a scrap with a crew from another part of town. Come Saturday both crews and others would have a drink together, then head to the football game to face off the opposing teams mob. We loved violence not each other, our only bond was to those who fought best. Most came from broken homes, not the heroic fallen soldier father this film presents. Just bog standard divorce or unknown. We were testosterone and alcohol fuelled angry young men filled with anger, violence was our release. The politics was secondary, we hated everyone, but had a clear view of who wasn't ours.

I'm English. I turned 15 in 1983. It wasn't a great time for me. Taking a trip down memory lane with This Is England didn't seem like a particularly appealing idea, but with director Shane Meadows (Dead Man's Shoes) in charge, I was sure I would be impressed regardless of the subject matter. As I expected, the general atmosphere of the film is bleak and depressing, the disaffected characters spewing anger and hatred. Thankfully, Meadows' superb handling of his material, and his exceptional cast's wonderful performances, make this look back at not-so-great Britain compelling viewing. And somewhere, in amongst all of the violence and emotional turmoil, there is even a faint glimmer of hope.Based on Meadow's own personal experiences growing up in England in the '80s, the film is steeped in realism, the era perfectly recreated in all of its miserable glory. Thomas Turgoose puts in a very impressive turn as central character Shaun, the young schoolboy who falls in with a gang of skinheads, but for me, the standout performance comes from Stephen Graham as bitter ex-con skinhead Combo, a thuggish brute whose own personal issues have made him into a volatile racist prone to explosive outbursts of violence. And yet, despite all of the despicable things he says and does, Graham's character actually warrants a modicum of pity, the bloke clearly a product of his own troubled upbringing — it's a memorably moving performance in another solid film from Meadows.

This movie was somewhat tough to know how to take. On the one hand - as a movie about coming of age - it's a fairly straight-forward, effective film. Shaun's anger and depression about the death of his father fighting in the Falklands is slowly eating away at him, and his new skinhead friends don't help him learn to cope with that, but they do give him a distraction and a sense of belonging that he obviously craves. Shaun is easily influenced, and Woody becomes a type of father figure to him, helping him find his own place in the world around him. On the other hand, though, the movie in very insular. Combo talks about the money and jobs lost to immigrants, but aside from the Falklands, there doesn't seem to be any real link between this group of skins and the outside world. They never seem to actually exist in the real world, other than the mob's trip to the National Front rally and when Woody's girlfriend heads to work. So when Combo decides to espouse his political points of view to the rest of the gang, it feels hollow and almost disjointed; here is this group of skinheads who never seem to work and do nothing except sit around, drink beer, smoke pot, and listen to records. And as Combo has spent the last several years in prison, he doesn't feel like someone who would be in the know about the political situation in England at the time. However, the details of the movie are fairly accurate. The National Front did play a huge role in attracting skinheads to their cause in the 80s, and the fashions are pretty spot on, as is the music. Although I think that the movie doesn't make much of an effort to pander to the uninitiated. If you don't know skinhead culture, you're going to find yourself lost on occasion. But by and large, most of the movie can be understood and appreciated without knowledge of what it is to be skinhead. Overall a decent movie, if not a bit two dimensional.

Shane Medows captures not only what it feels like to be an outsider but also what it feels like to finally be part of something. Both have their pros and cons. The young kid in the film finally gets accepted with the older kids and what seems like a change for the better in his worldview can also be a change for the worse - time to grow and see what the world is really about and it's not all unicorns and rainbows. I don't wan to sat too much about the plot because there is so much wonder and exploration in the film. But it has a theme that life isn't always fair and you may never really get what you want but be sure to hold on to what is important because it could be gone tomorrow.