This is England

I went to the cinema for the first time in ages last night. The first time since I saw perhaps the year’s worst film The Number 23. I went to see This is England. Shane Meadows’ latest has a lot in common with his last film Dead Man’s Shoes.

They both spotlight violence, bleak council estates and gang mentality and how some people threaten and dominate those weaker than them. You‘re probably aware of the film’s plot, but briefly, set in 1983, it centres on a 12 year old lad, who lost his father in the Falklands. He falls in with a gang of skinheads and comes under the spell of Combo a skinhead recently released from prison who thinks its his duty to claim back what ‘is England’ from immigrants and everyone else he thinks has a better time of it than him.

The film captures skinheads well. Some of them were just into the fashion. The haircut, the clothes, the music. Others saw it as some sort of solution for why their lives were shit. It in no way glamorises violence or racism. In fact it makes it seem pretty pathetic. It’s people trying to dominate folk weaker than them. And that goes up as well as down as we see Combo at a National Front meeting looking up to NF leader (a great understated cameo from Frank Harper), who’s dominating and controlling him in the same way he’s attempting to do with the younger lads.

One of the film’s stars Andrew Shim sums up how the film differs from other skinhead films well in an interview with Britfilms.

"See, that’s the thing, ‘This Is England’ has captured it perfectly. Films like ‘Romper Stomper’ and ‘American History X’ focus on the racism and kicking the s**t out of each other. They don’t do true skinheads the justice they deserve and show what they were really like. They were listening to Reggae and Reggae artists were making music for skinheads."

The cast are all excellent, Thomas Turgoose is the most talked about cast member, being the young centre of the film, but Stephen Graham is also excellent as Combo. It's dark and it's brutal in places, but it's well worth seeing.

The This is England website has a lot of good behind the scenes video and other stuff.