User Reviews

Young Shaun Fields is bullied at school and trudging home fed-up when he is beckoned over by a bunch of older boys hanging out in the underpass. Although they are skinheads, Shaun likes their leader Woody and likewise he wins them over with his attitude is bigger than his size and he becomes part of the gang – hanging out and having fun. This changes when Woody's friend Combo is released from prison, his militant views causes a split in the group – with Shaun staying wit Combo as Woody, Milky and others head off.

It helps to be of a certain age to appreciate everything this film has to offer. For myself I barely fell into this group mainly because I grew up in Northern Ireland and it goes without saying that we had our own "issues" to deal with while England had theirs. However I have some point of reference with the news etc even if I was not even 10 at the point of this film. That said, even with my limited knowledge I still found the people and period within this film to be totally convincing. A colleague who encouraged me to see this, was in his teens in the Midlands at the time this film was set, did tell me that the film got it spot on in regards the people that he remembered and the culture at the time.

This is the film's strength and has always been an attraction of Meadows' films that he manages to produce natural and convincing characters within a realistic world. This is important because the narrative relies you the audience being engaged by the characters as it is very much driven by them. Through them Meadows deals with issues such as male rage, intolerance and the importance of belonging to a gang (or group) and he does so in a powerful and engaging script. It is easy to say that Meadows achieved this by drawing from real life experiences but it still takes a great deal of skill to translate experiences to written words and then to actors. Like I said, it does really help to understand the society and mood at the time this was set but even without that it is good enough to get you into it without this knowledge ahead of time.

The delivery of the characters falls to a strong cast who will mostly be unknown outside of the UK but who all turn in spot-on characters. Turgoose got the attention early on when this film came out and rightly so because he does delivery a strong performance that is a million miles from the cute and annoying performances of others his age in many other mainstream films. However for me the absolute standout performance was from Stephen Graham. Words and action give him a simple "racist thug" character but he has understood his character and the complexities of the rage within him looking for a channel. When he is in thug mode he is convincing and compelling but his best moments come where he lets you see something else momentarily. It is obvious to pick it but his best moment is his relaxed chat with Milky, you can see the "real" person but also see the anger spark in him before finding the easiest outlet for it – something simple to lash out at. It is an impressive moment in a roundly impressive performance. These two together dominate the film but that is to take nothing away from the roundly solid support work from Shim, McClure, Gilgun and others who are all convincing and play their parts perfectly. I rarely think to mention the supporting crew when reviewing a film but several things did stand out for me. Firstly those designing sets and costumes got it just right – there was really nothing that felt modern, from the clothes right through to the outdoor locations (the scattering of archive footage also helps). Secondly is the cinematography which is bleak and gritty, perfectly matching the mood of the time and of the script.

Overall then a very impressive British film – no, a very impressive film, full stop. The places, period and characters are really well scripted by Meadows who in turn brings the best out of his cast with not a single performance really standing out as clunky or out of place. Excellent leads from Turgoose and Graham only make things better, while the film looks great by capturing the period in looks (costumes) and feel (cinematography).

Set in 1983, "This Is England" tells the story of 12-year-old Shaun, who is trying to overcome the grief of losing his father who died during the Falklands War. After an unhappy day at school, he meets a group of young vandals, who become his best friends. But meeting them is only the beginning of a greater challenge in Shaun's life as through them he meets Combo, a skinhead and an ex-prisoner with an unbounded hatred for racial minorities.

As Shaun's joining Woody's gang in the beginning is by mere accident, his friendship with Combo is a conscious decision he makes as he does not want his father's death to be in vain. The film tells how Shaun learns to grow up, not in school and not by TV, but by opening his eyes to the realities around him.

The film is dark, funny and thought-provoking and one of the best British films I have ever seen.

This 80s set drama reinforces Shane Meadow's reputation as an actor's director and one that thank god, is actually interested enough in his indigenous culture not to take a cheque from a Hollywood studio and waste his talent making American genre movies. Danny Boyle take note. Paul Anderson, stay where you are.

This is a considered, exceptionally well acted story centred on a 12 year olds adoption by a gang of skinheads in the months after his Father's death in the Falklands. Initially it's all harmless enough, smashing sinks and wasting time. They listen to good music and smoke dope – not a problem you may think, in fact I once worked for a man who essentially built a career on that. But things turn ugly when old gang member combo returns from prison, having had any vestige of racial tolerance buggered out of him. He's a proto-Nick Griffin, in the days before he opened an account with tie rack but with more visible tattoos, determined to fight the "war" against ethnic undesirables…and no, that doesn't means Geordies (I had to check that too). The boy is drawn in by Combo's pitch, particularly the part about wasted solders liberating sheep in the Falklands, which strikes a simplistic note and before you can say "wasted youth" trouble ensues.

The period is vividly recreated, though Meadows can't resist having the greatest hits of the day playing on the radio as people walk down the street, and a cast who weren't even sperm and ovum in the real 1983, are superb and have a great career ahead of them, or rather would, were there an independent domestic industry to speak of. Mind you, Shane should be working for a while at least.

What impresses are the finely rendered details. Mass recruitment to the National Front is portrayed in relatively benign terms – a cosseted meeting in a working men's club. There, then as now, a hatred of immigration and cultural diversity is rationalised as a rescue mission – hauling Englishness back from its diluted and fractious state to something bound to a fictitious idyll represented by the likes of Churchill (who opposed all emancipating reforms throughout the first three decades of the 20th century and pioneered the use of chemical weapons and labour camps), war time working class solidarity and that kind of male sack contents. Then, again as now, the ringleaders pass themselves off as respectable patriots, suited and business like, trotting out the familiar mantra of welcoming the hard working immigrant but rejecting the rest – ergo they're not racists at all. Obvious really! Having presented this pack of lies, Meadow's discredits it with equal verve. When combo storms into the hard working Pakistani shop owner's newsagent, threatens to kill him and steals his stock (because presumably working for it wasn't an option) there's little in the way of appreciation for the man's contribution to the economy. A simple "thank you for the annual 2 billion pound surplus in 2007 money you and your fellow immigrants contribute, subsidising benefit dependent ex-cons like myself" would have sufficed but no, its abuse a giant knife. As combo listens to Milk describe the simply pleasures of his family life – a scene that's like watching someone sit on a bomb you know is about to explode, his decision to try and batter him to death in a jealous rage is a tacit acknowledgement of what actually lies at the heart of the future BNP's membership - simple envy and bitter resentment coupled with an idiots view of history.

When Meadow's explores the personal motivations for this hate his characters and the film as a whole have an air of authenticity, built on universally excellent and naturalistic performances. It's the attempt to tie the characters to the wider political and social context that strikes a false note.

Meadows locates the mutation of the skinhead movement from anarchist to racist by showing us footage of the Falkland's war and Thatcher. Combos been in prison for three and half years and it isn't a coincidence that his captivity dates from Thatcher's accession to government – he's a symbolic globule of Thatcherite folly. Sending your armed forces to protect a hill and kill sheep Meadows suggests, proved a stark reminder of Britain's loss of status in the world and this, coupled with Maggie's systematic and ruthless destruction of the working class through mass employment and the atomising of society, which essentially ate like acid through traditional working class communities (which was always the point), was decisive in inflaming social tensions. This is a fair judgement of history but labouring the Falkland's as an inciting incident overstates its importance, when a more rigorous look at the domestic situation might have struck a stronger note. All of this suggests that while Meadow's is a vintage documenter of his own childhood experiences and has an gift for social realism, his credentials as a social historian are less secure.

Mind you, this may be all a misreading. Perhaps Meadows is suggesting Roland Rat is responsible – the morning TV menace featuring in the opening archive footage, and who'd bet against it?

It's been a long time in my celluloid watching life since a real appreciation of a film some three quarters of the way in has subsided to head shaking and disappointment by the closing credits.

I can't add any more to the reviews already on here - plot development, narrative, humour, recreation of 80's England and acting (on the whole) are all top drawer.

But what sort of ending was that ?? The scene in which Combo (superb performance by the actor by the way) finally succumbed to the demons and prejudice within was fantastic and would have made a worthy finale to the film. Stop it there. No context required. No need to wrap things up.

But another 15 mins followed.

Firstly I'm not quite sure what the archive clips from the Falklands were trying to achieve - Adding resonance to the story just told ?? by a representation of misguided nationalism ?? or a reflection of the jingoism of the time ?? I'm not sure. The music certainly didn't help - the soaring, emotive classical accompaniment was overly mawkish and just made me feel I was being manipulated into a war is wrong/thatcher was bad standpoint. The film was great no need to increase the scope or make sure we knew it's intentions.

Why the need to let us know Milky was OK in the scene with Sean and his mum ? - surely it hits harder not knowing this.

But the final scene was so grandiose. Here comes the classical music again and Sean rejects the life he was leading by symbolically throwing the flag into the sea. Terrible, overblown and - dare I say it - 100% Hollywood. It reminded me of the scenes from those 80's cop movies where the grizzled NY cop having cleared his name - or that of his dead buddy - and exposed the bad cops ends the film by casting his badge/commendation into the sea.

So yet again the inability to end a film well and avoid MAKING IT REALLY CLEAR HOW YOU SHOULD FEEL really tarnishes the experience as a whole.

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.

I watched this film last night with anticipation, but really wasn't very impressed.

With the exception of 'Combo', I thought the acting was poor and the narrative was limited. It came across like a 'made for TV' drama.

I felt that the film was very contrived. The whole set up of hammering in the context at the start (yes, we get that this is 80s Britain - you can stop now) was tiresome, and gave a very one-sided view of what life was like in 80s Britain - poverty, war juxtaposed with royalty, Margaret Thatcher, yet nothing in between? There were actually middle-classes who existed back then - just ordinary working people, with a decent wage and a mortgage. The Falklands clips also seemed to be added randomly towards the end, for 'dramatic effect', I presume.

The sequence of events felt a tad disjointed, as the characters moved one one action to the next without us seeing how their mindset could've changed so quickly.

The relationship between 'Shaun' and 'Smell' was toe-curling. I couldn't even look during the snogging scene. I find it very hard to believe that she would've been attracted to a boy who was not only so much younger, but also looked so much younger. I know there were only four years between them, but four years is nothing once you reach your twenties, yet it's a huge difference in your teens! In my experience, that kind of teen age difference only occurs when the girl is the younger one, since girls mature so much quicker, and are more on the wavelength of boys a few years older. Sorry, but I didn't buy it - an unnecessary plot point created for shock value.

The ending was somewhat abrupt and, again, contrived. If the flag throwing incident was supposed to be iconic, then it fell somewhat short in my eyes.

It bugs me that British films only concern themselves with either the upper classes or the poverty-stricken. Don't get me wrong, I love Trainspotting, and Four Weddings has its charms, but can't we Brits come up with anything different? Why are our films always so hung up on the class system? I was born in 1973, so wasn't much different in age to 'Shaun' would've been in 1983. I grew up in a single parent family on a fairly down-trodden council estate in a city in England. However, my childhood experiences were vastly different to those portrayed in the film - I don't even remember racism being an issue (although i'm not saying it didn't exist). 'This is England'? Not in my experience.

The bottom line is that I felt this film lacked substance, and I was completely bored and unimpressed throughout.