Main Cast: Paddy Considine, Gary Stretch, Toby Kebbell, Stuart Wolfenden, Neil Bell
Release Year: 2004
Country: UK
Run Time: 86 minutes
Plot
Richard (Paddy Considine of In America) returns to the rural region of Derbyshire, where he grew up, after seven years in the military. His mentally challenged brother, Anthony (newcomer Toby Kebbell), tags along. Something awful has happened to Anthony, and Richard means to set things right. Richard angrily confronts Herbie (Stuart Wolfenden), a small-time drug dealer, in the local pub, then creepily apologizes to him a few minutes later outside. Herbie runs to his mates and tells them what happened, but before they have a chance to respond, they find that they're targets. Richard starts out with relatively harmless pranks, vandalizing their houses and painting their faces while they're asleep. Sonny (former boxer Gary Stretch), the gang's bullying leader, confronts Richard on the street, but Richard refuses to back down. Sonny's ragtag crew are ill equipped to respond to Richard's ruthless military tactics. As Richard inexorably goes about his business, and the bodies begin to pile up, we learn, through flashbacks, what happened to Anthony. Dead Man's Shoes was directed by Shane Meadows (Once Upon a Time in the Midlands), who co-wrote the script with Considine. The film had its U.S. premiere at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Review
Director Shane Meadows, whose working-class dramas have always had an air of good humor, takes a dark turn with the absorbing revenge drama Dead Man's Shoes. Anchored by the grimly hypnotic lead performance of Paddy Considine (who co-wrote the script with his longtime friend Meadows), the film bears a passing resemblance to Mike Hodges' recent I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, with a tough, stoic older brother (Considine as Richard) returning from the wilderness to avenge a grievous wrong done to his good-natured younger brother (Toby Kebbell in a well-modulated, affecting performance as the mentally impaired Anthony). But Meadows' film is richer and more resonant than Hodges' in what it says about the nature of violence and vengeance. For one thing, Richard's victims are examined hanging out at length, and, aside from the menacing Sonny (Gary Stretch), they have a goofy stoner bonhomie that distinguishes them as people, not villains. Stupid, obnoxious people, perhaps, but wholly human. There's an improvisatory feel to these scenes, and they seem refreshingly drawn from life experience. Unlike Malcolm McDowell's sneering, tuxedoed creep in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, these aren't hateful characters, and you can understand how Anthony would be drawn to their company. Meadows gets the visuals just right, using stark, simple images to tell what is essentially a stark, simple truth. But it's hard to imagine the film without Considine's amazing work. Considine is generally a likeable presence, and his Richard is identifiably soulful and remorseful as he goes inexorably about his grim task, but we never doubt his resolve. There are a few moments when the film feels a bit programmatic. Richard's soldierly expertise occasionally strains credulity, and the film lurches uneasily into the Halloween realm. But Considine's gripping performance rings true throughout. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Paul Sadot - Tuff; Jo Hartley - Jo; Seamus O'Neill - Big Al; Paul Hurstfield - Mark; Emily Aston - Patti; George Newton - Gypsy John; Craig Considine - Craig; Matt Considine - Matt; Andrew Shim - Elvis
Credit
Adam Tomlinson - Art Director, Carole Crane - Casting, Louise Knight - Co-producer, Ada Gay Griffin - First Assistant Director, Shane Meadows - Director, Chris Wyatt - Editor, Lucas Roche - Editor, Celia Haining - Editor, Peter Carlton - Executive Producer, Tessa Ross - Executive Producer, Steve Beckett - Executive Producer, Will Clarke - Executive Producer, Arvo Pärt - Composer (Music Score), Daniel Cohen - Cinematographer, Mark Herbert - Producer, James Feltham - Sound/Sound Designer, Stephan Haywood - Sound/Sound Designer, Nigel Haeth - Sound/Sound Designer, Shane Meadows - Screenwriter, Paul Fraser - Screenwriter, Paddy Considine - Screenwriter
The story revolves around the character of Richard (Paddy Considine), a paratrooper returning to his small home town of Matlock in the Peak District. Richard has returned home from the army to exact revenge on his mentally disabled younger brother Anthony's tormentors. In the opening line of the film, Richard narrates "God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and allow them into Heaven. I can't live with that."
Richard and Anthony camp at an abandoned farm near the town, their reminiscences of childhood interspersed with flashbacks to Anthony's ordeal at the hands of the gang youth, and Richard's subsequent revenge. This revenge starts when the gang and their leader Sonny find out about his presence. He confronts Richard in a failed attempt to intimidate him. Richard's revenge begins with the older members of the gang. While they are asleep he sneaks into their house, wearing a green boiler suit and a gas mask. He spray paints one of the two men's hair multi-coloured and paints a target on the back of the other's suit. On the same evening he enters Sonny's house and applies make up to Sonny's face.
However things soon turn nasty as Richard sneaks into a club where the gang are hiding out and playing cards and kills one of their members with an axe, using his blood to scribble the words "One Down" on the wall. The gang take their car and go to the farm where Richard is staying with Anthony. Sending in Big Al (one of their members) to draw Richard out, Sonny prepares to shoot him with a rifle. However, he misses and kills Al. With no bullets remaining in the gun he decides to quickly retreat and return back to town.
The surviving members return to a local petrol station where Tuff runs off, scared of Richard's revenge. The other three return home, they search the house expecting Richard to be there. However while they are upstairs Richard laces their kettle with a sizable amount of drugs (LSD/Ketamine) taken from the gang earlier in the film. The three men become too intoxicated to properly react to Richard's presence and he kills them one by one. He shoots Sonny in the head, palm-strikes Soz at such an angle that he is killed, and finally stabs Herbie. Before killing Herbie, he reveals having already killed Tuff, producing his corpse in a suitcase, although it is not revealed how.
With one member of the original gang left - a reformed character with a wife and children - Richard abducts him and takes him to an old outbuilding. It is now revealed that Anthony died long ago, hanging himself after the gang abandoned him with a noose around his neck. The Anthony that is seen with Richard throughout the film is, in fact, a hallucination. During this confrontation, Richard confesses to his heinous crimes, describing the blood on his hands, saying " Now I'm the monster...", and "You were supposed to be the monster...now I'm the fucking beast." he says that the crimes he's committed and is unsure of what else he's capable of doing, he also says that all he wants is to lie down with his brother, and demands the final gang member kill him, which he does, after Richard tells him to think of his children (implying he may kill them) and begging him to kill him. The gang member is then shown distraught, with his hands covered in blood. He then leaves and the camera then pans across the landscape.
The film was ranked number 180 in Empire magazine's "201 Greatest Movies Of All Time" feature in the March 2006 issue. It also made another appearance in the magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time where it was ranked at number 462.[1]
