Shane Meadows is an interesting voice for British film, and this is one of his best works.
Richard (Paddy Considine) returns home from the war to find that his little brother has killed himself. But there is more to the story, and Richard knows the truth.
Led by Sonny (Gary Stretch) a low level hood drug dealer/enforcer, a bunch of users and small-time dealers bully the retarded boy, Anthony. They urge him on to smoke weed and they force a girl to fuck him. When Anthony is high, Sonny starts screwing with his mind, verbal/mental torture. Sonny tries to get the kid to suck his penis.
All of this Anthony is unprepared for, he wants to go home. But these degenerates are pretending to be his friend, just so they can see what they can make him do.
How does Anthony end up killing himself? The crew get into a van and decide to drop acid. Sonny gives Anthony some as well. And then starts to really mess with his head. They take him to the devil’s house and wrap a noose around his neck. They force him to eat another tab of acid and they leave him in this empty, dead building, to rot in the mush of his mind.
Richard hunts down the men that attacked and tortured his little brother. He spikes their tea kettle with a huge amount of a-class drugs. Walks in while they’re high and shoots one of them in the head.
His plan is to hunt down, torture, maim and kill everybody who was involved. He’s a soldier, so killing is not new to him. His mourning soul feeds his rage, and ticking each villain off the list provides a satisfying relief. But there is a line between revenge and explosive raw violence; this line is murky for Richard. He still feels his loss so strongly, he still talks to Anthony. At some point, Richard begins to find that the villain of this story is not so clear.
Meadows has achieved a powerful, emotional story with interesting, shocking action and genuine reactions from the characters. When the men who tortured Anthony are being hunted, they realise as we do, the shift in the game; that now they’re the victims. As a viewer, we are given the opportunity to feel sorry for these men, despite what they did. And we start to see some vaguely interesting personality clashes, as the people beneath Sonny in the drug business hierarchy finally think for themselves and struggle to react to the situation.
The only obvious weakness of this piece is that most of the character development for the underlings doesn’t come about until the end of the story, so we don’t care very much as each victim is hacked and slashed, then disposed of.
Paddy Considine who co-wrote the script and plays the star of this film – Anthony’s big brother Richard, is able to sell the pain of losing a little brother, and of the cruelty at their hands; and attempting to stifle the anger of it all. He’s also able to sell how dangerous Richard is, that he stands up to Sonny, and everybody else. He’s fearless, callous, a walking weapon – and this time they’ve really pissed off the wrong guy.
3.5 stars
the joy of eating and the folly of thinking 