True blood brothers

No one seems to know why Shane Meadows's films don't fare better at the box office. He is an original and inventive British film-maker, if perhaps a bit of a tease. Take Dead Man's Shoes. Set in a dreary Midlands town, it is shaped in the form of a revenge western. Which is fine, but why the peculiar religious overtones in the final reel? No western I know ends quite so pretentiously.

Still, most of the film is very watchable. An ex-Army man and his mentally challenged younger brother arrive in a town of bad memories. They shared a happy childhood together there, but the younger man has been badly abused by a gang of druggies while the soldier was away. The older man is determined on bloody revenge - the key reason for which is made known only towards the end.

The ex-soldier scares the living daylightsout of the gang and then, one by one, does them in.

The violence, fortunately, is not dwelled upon and the film is much improved not only by its direction, which is nerveless and often shot with a hand-held camera, but by a cast who seldom put a foot wrong. The chief triumph belongs to Paddy Considine, who plays the revenger with a formidably steely air of quiet menace - he also cowrote the screenplay.

You wonder where the police are as the murders escalate and why the terrified gang don't simply scatter in various directions, but westerns assume a certain illogic naturally, the melodrama consistently holds the attention and Meadows's portrait of the town and its inhabitants takes a bit of beating.

It's a pity about the ending. I couldn't suspend my disbelief for it. But given the current vogue for bloodlust this will make its way at the box-office. And no one could deny that the talented Meadows deserves a success with his fourth and sharpest feature.

Dead Man's Shoes
Cert: 18

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