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Top Critics (25)
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How sad and predictable is the fate of those who counsel violence as a means to an end. And yet how poignant it all seems when viewed through Shane Meadows' thoughtful lens.
You wouldn't think a film about a group of British skinheads during the early 1980s could be a sweet, nostalgic coming-of-age period piece, but that's the surprise of the authentic, fresh and utterly relevant This Is England.
Its tough but moving neo-realist approach make it one of the better British films of recent times.
A drama that's so potent and persuasive yet also natural and intimate that it almost has the heft of a documentary.
A movie about the allure of groupthink and how the warm comfort of being surrounded by peers wilts all sense of balance.
A hard-fisted punch of reality based on the filmmaker's experiences growing up in England's Midlands in 1983.
It is the war within him--and by extension, within the minds of many embittered, working class young men left behind in Thatcher's England--that Meadows's film most strikingly portrays.
Steeped in the raw mix of ska and punk sound as expression of the youth alienation and misguided rage of those tumultuous times, an alarming voice of the surging army of jobless youth back then dubbed 'no hopers.'
A rowdy but oddly affectionate gang of local skinhead upstart eccentrics are into generally minor mischief, but as social crisis deepens, so does the skinhead subculture turn a darker corner.
This is the film that Meadows' deceptively casual, hands-in-its-pockets, neighbourhood storytelling has led up to. A tale of one boy's summer becomes a majestic, unromantic look back at 1980s Britain. With some lovely deleted scenes . . . followed by two
Stephen Graham delivers a bravura performance as the brooding, mesmerizing Combo, clearly channeling Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper.
This portrait of identity in Thatcher's Britain vividly recreates the youth culture of Ben Sherman shirts and Doc Martens boots.
Meadows obviously knows the working class neighborhoods that he depicts. There's a grit and honesty to his film as he chronicles the mundane details of these kids' lives.
An intelligent, spare, mean-streets sort of story, This Is England features superb performances...
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