thomas4cinema

Admittedly, I never heard of Shaun Meadows before, and admittedly, I only watched the film because everybody wrote that it is the best British film anyone will see this year or last or the one before or the next one. I really sometimes fall for those blunt messages, when they are coming from the right bunch of people. Kermode sometimes, Guardian / Observer / Independent writers, often. So in this case I followed their unisono cry and was rewarded by a film extremely well done, well narrated and well acted. It reminded me of those old days when Riff-Raff and Raining Stones, Local Hero and That Sinking Feeling proved that the British movies are a league of their own. Back to form, or just individual genius?  Whatever: a very strong protrait of a little boy’s carreer from bullied to bully, from victim to collaborator, from kid to spoiled kid – and all those transitions do not mean that you would lose sympathy. If you manage to feel sympathy with the little brat, that feeling stays, and if you find him annoying to begin with, the film only underlines what has gone wrong. He gets entangled with the local skinhead scene, becomes buddy and friends and enjoys finally having friends so much that he completely loses track on what the hell he is doing there and who is friends with. Great and maybe authentic (how would I know?) characters like the brute who just returns from prison, the punk girl who is ugly beyond believe, but willing to try out the little one, the English-Jamaican with the nice smile and the funny name, the mother who is not desperate enough to understand what’s going on, and and and … As I learned, a depiction of a very specific moment in the UK skinhead history, when they started teaming with the National Front and developed their xenophobe branches. Told as an individual kid’s story, this is still an utterly believeable and very good film. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480025/