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
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