A couple of weeks ago I watched a film called Protein by Tony Burke (which I do recommend, despite what I’m about to say about it). I enjoyed it a great deal — the premise was fantastic, the bleak bits were bleak as fuck, the gross bits were proper gross and the funny bits were hilarious — but it never QUITE managed to pull it all together into a seamless whole. And I was never quite sure what it was trying to achieve, though I will definitely be watching whatever the guy does next.
Anyway, what was the point of me telling you that? Well, this week I watched Shane Meadows’ revenge thriller Dead Man’s Shoes for the first time since seeing it at the pictures, and now I know exactly what Burke was trying to achieve (and ALMOST did). It’s got the bleak, it’s got the grim, and it’s got the fucking hilarious, without ever once stepping out of the singular mood it creates for itself. It feels real, because real life is all about a bizarre combination of seemingly incompatible elements.
On the surface it’s a pretty simple story — Richard (played with incredible intensity by the always-good Paddy Considine) returns from the army to take revenge for his brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell). Initially we see the two of them setting up camp on an old farm, but through a series of flashbacks we start to realise Richard may be something of an unreliable protagonist.
The other side of the equation, of course, is the gang on whom he is wreaking his vengeance. Although “gang” is overstating their case a little — this is more of a friendship group who have graduated from taking drugs to selling them, and whose leader Sonny (Gary Stretch) fancies himself as something rather more than just the smartest one in a small group of fools. Disorganised crime, if you will.
It’s a pretty tight story and I don’t want to give too much away if you haven’t seen it before, but suffice it to say we learn very early on that they richly deserve what is coming to them; but as we gradually learn just HOW much they deserve it, we are also learning just what a loose cannon Richard is. With the flashbacks providing a dual narrative structure, we see his justification growing even as his violence escalates. To put it simply, nobody really comes out of it well.
But what elevates it is that blend I was talking about earlier. The film’s centrepiece is a brutal murder sequence which begins with one of the funniest and most well-observed trip sequences ever put to a film without needing to resort to flashy special effects, and while the dissonance is jarring, it’s jarring in exactly the way it should be as the mood shifts from comedy to horror like nothing since Man Bites Dog. There’s a classic bungled assassination attempt in there too, and then a final showdown which… well, I’ll leave that for you to discover.
An intoxicating mix of vigilante thriller and Poundland superhero movie all set against a social realist backdrop, it not only works in many seemingly contradictory genres, it does it without pitting them against each other, and that’s what makes it such an exhilarating weekend in Hell. As is usual with Second Sight, this rerelease comes with an abundance of extras — a book of essays, tons of interviews, even the accompanying graphic novel if you get the limited edition.
Since release it’s been something of a cult classic, but while it’s never really been forgotten, Dead Man’s Shoes definitely deserves to be remembered again. If you’ve not seen it before, strap in, you’re in for one fuck of a beating.-Justin Farrington-
