Dead man's shoes

The stock in trade of many British mainstream movies is gore, gangs and revenge. They sell seats and DVD rentals, and provide incomes even for above-average talents such as director Shane Meadows (Twenty Four Seven) and his drama-schoolmate actor Paddy Considine (In America), who co-wrote Dead Man's Shoes (2004). Costing less than a million US dollars and filmed in only three weeks, it also proved that commercial cinema can earn awards.

Their story was simple. An English soldier returns home to the town (beside the scenic Peak District) where his mentally-handicapped younger brother had been drugged and abused by a gang of local dealers eight years before, and methodically sets out to teach them terminal lessons. Clive Owen had recently starred in a similar tale (I'll Sleep When I'm Dead), and everyone in the Brit film industry remembered Get Carter (the 1971 original, starring Michael Caine).

Even with a gang of six odd characters to dispose of one by one, it's a stretch to fill even 80-odd minutes of screen-time. Meadows does so with many handsomely composed shots and close-ups of bearded Considine's usings and the simple brother's twitchy toothy smiles. Too many gratuitously pretty shots overall. There's also at least one over-long usage of a mournful cathedral choir filling the soundtrack, which also employs the customary mix of pop music and spooky sound effects.

Meadows maintains a teasing pace, despite frequent jump-cuts into scratchy B&W or tinted flashbacks showing the then-younger gangsters horsing around with the young brother. Tension is not heightened, as it should be, by the gang members. Well acted but mostly non-threatening, they are presented as provincial bumpkins with only one shotgun, one bullet, a comic Dolly car and a mini-shortbow. The co-writers and their credited extra screen-playwright failed to provide Considine's professional killer (a commando) with fearful foes.

The director alone can be blamed for the disastrous vocal soundtrack. In his attempt to create an air of reality, with hand-held camera-work and odd angles, Meadows seemed to have forgotten to put microphones in places that would record conversations clearly. The actors, stuck in cine-verite, mumble as normal blokes would in their living rooms, whose furnishings further muffle their poorly-enunciated conversations. With their dialogue conducted in a medley of regional working-class accents, the action can often only be surmised. The lack of English-language subtitles on the DVD is consequently unforgivable.

Ending on two-generational notes of pseudo-Graecoid tragic significance, the movie is finally a disappointment because a viewer senses that both Meadows and Considine could have produced a superior product. Since 2004, they have done so in further award-winning ways: Meadows for his film and TV versions of This Is England, Considine as a short-film director at the Sundance and Venice film festivals.