Themes: Love Triangles, Starting Over, Haunted By the Past
Main Cast: Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans, Kathy Burke, Shirley Henderson, Ricky Tomlinson, Finn Atkins
Release Year: 2002
Country: UK
Run Time: 103 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Shane Meadows directed this film, which is the third and final chapter in his Nottingham Trilogy which also includes 1999's A Room for Romeo Brass and 1997's Twentyfourseven. Starring The Full Monty's Robert Carlyle, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands is a twist on the traditional Western film, transplanting the action to modern-day Nottingham, England. Jimmy (Carlyle) is a small-time criminal who comes back into town after seeing his old girlfriend turn down a marriage proposal on television. Rhys Ifan (Notting Hill) co-stars as Dek, the jilted proposer who looks to stop Jimmy from rekindling the relationship. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands screened as part of the Director's Fortnight at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Review
Whenever it draws parallels between its source material -- the classic spaghetti Western Once Upon a Time in the West -- and the mundane details of life in the English midlands, director Shane Meadows' broad, realist comedy is a winning, knowing farce, worthy of Mike Leigh or Danny Boyle at their most buoyant. The more it strays from its template, the more it becomes a conventional romantic comedy -- not the worst quality in the world for a movie to have, but certainly a step down from the trenchant satire of smoky bingo parlors, anonymous pubs, and cookie-cutter houses Meadows establishes in his opening act. Luckily for the director, his performers are all on the same page, with Rhys Ifans delivering a sly, hilarious variation on his usual shellshocked-naïf routine; Robert Carlyle lending a healthy dose of swagger to his dashing -- if somewhat pathetic -- ex-paramour character; and Shirley Henderson anchoring the two leads with her haggard air of common sense. Best of all is the young Finn Atkins as the daughter who convinces Ifans' Dek to grow a backbone and stand up for himself; their scenes together are refreshingly free of the cloying cuteness usually assigned to the sage-child-mentors-clueless-adult subplot that's all too common to Hollywood romantic comedies. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Kelly Thresher - Donna; Andrew Shim - Donut; Ryan Bruce - Emmerson; Eliot Otis Brown Walters; Antony Strachan; David McKay; James Cosmo; Vic Reeves - Plonko; Bob Mortimer; Richard Garfoot; Vanessa Feltz
Credit
Anthea Nelson - Art Director, Julia Duff - Casting, James Wilson - Co-producer, Louise Knight - Co-producer, Robin Fraser-Paye - Costume Designer, Cherry Gould - First Assistant Director, Shane Meadows - Director, Trevor Waite - Editor, Peter Beston - Editor, Paul Webster - Executive Producer, Hanno Huth - Executive Producer, Paul Trijbits - Executive Producer, John Lunn - Composer (Music Score), Liz Gallagher - Musical Direction/Supervision, Crispian Sallis - Production Designer, Brian Tufano - Cinematographer, Andrea Calderwood - Producer, Colin Nicolson - Sound/Sound Designer, Paul Hamblin - Sound/Sound Designer, Shane Meadows - Screenwriter, Paul Fraser - Screenwriter
Dek (Rhys Ifans) proposes to his girlfriend Shirley (Shirley Henderson) on TV. When Jimmy (Robert Carlyle), "the great love of her life" and father of her daughter, sees this, he returns in an attempt to win back her heart. However after deserting his friends in Scotland during an unsuccessful robbery of some clowns, his friends turn against him and come to the Midlands to try to track him down.
