Left Field Cinema

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

This famous quote by Friedrich Nietzsche is mirrored in the words of Richard (Paddy Considine), the dark protagonist at the heart of Shane Meadows' harrowing lo-fi revenge shocker Dead Man's Shoes:

"You, you were supposed to be a monster - now I'm the fucking beast. There's blood on my hands, from what you made me do."

As the film opens we see career soldier Richard marching purposefully across the fields of a bleak Midlands landscape, trailed by his younger brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) who suffers from learning difficulties. It soon becomes obvious that Richard is returning to his home town for the first time in many years and that he has come as a self-styled avenging angel to punish his brother's tormentors. While Richard was away learning his trade Anthony has been bullied and abused in some undefined way by a gang of local layabouts and drug dealers led by Sonny (Gary Stretch), and his brother wants revenge.

What follows in Dead Man's Shoes is a bleak and unremitting portrait of how anger and guilt can have the most terrible consequences. This film is not for the faint-hearted but if you are prepared to follow Shane Meadows' stark vision of a man possessed by his desire for revenge then you will not be disappointed. Occasionally touching and always terrifying, this is one story that you will not forget in a hurry.

After the initial success of his debut film, A Room for Romeo Brass (in which he first collaborated with Considine), Meadows was lined up by Film 4 Productions to make Once Upon A Time in the Midlands. By his own admission it was a difficult working relationship. Meadows was left feeling angry and frustrated that his vision of a bleak revenge thriller had been compromised by, as he saw it, a company in financial difficulties desperate to create another Full Monty cash cow. The end result of this perceived studio interference was not the film Meadows intended and this is nowhere more obvious than in its omission from the 2007 'This is Shane Meadows' DVD anthology.

After Once Upon A Time in the Midlands was released, and Meadows was feeling low and disenchanted with the whole studio process, it was Considine that issued the rallying call to arms and persuaded him to return to his amateur film-making roots. Together they quickly wrote a script loosely based upon personal experience. Armed with a hand-held video camera, a van full of actors mainly sourced from workshops, and a meagre one million pound budget they set off to make a film 'below the radar' and without studio interference. Dead Man's Shoes is the result.

As the film progresses, Richard begins a gradual process of terrorisation as he stalks his prey through the incongruous movie setting of council flats and working men's clubs in a dead-end Midlands town. The gang are initially spooked just by his return to the village, next he taunts them, and finally he begins to wreak vengeance upon each member one by one.

The film is naturalistic in the tradition of the British 'kitchen-sink' drama, and all the more disturbing for it. While the subject matter does owe a debt to Death Wish and Rambo; the tone is much more Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, or Alan Clarke. Straw Dogs and Get Carter are much better analogies, although Dead Man's Shoes may be closest overall to Taxi Driver (with Meadows doffing his cap to Scorsese at one point in the piece).

In many ways Dead Man’s Shoes can be viewed as something of a B-Movie, but its ambitions are loftier. Its characters are not caricatures and the violence we witness is not comedic, viscerally exciting, or enjoyable in any way. It is also never gratuitous. This is not a Quentin Tarantino homage; Meadows has made an understated film in which Richard's actions are brutally real and hurt everyone including the perpetrator. Dead Man's Shoes has all the cinematic horror of watching a monster gradually pick-off a group of friends one by one but with an added twist:

We are following the monster.

This works because in parallel with the escalation of Richard's brutality we are shown via slowly revealed flashbacks more details of the nature of Anthony's abuse, and of its severity. The two continue to balance each other out and the one seems to justify (or at least explain) the other.

It is a clever trick and one that might not have worked were it not for Considine's performance. With the whole piece built around him he gives a staggering portrayal that is both tortured and touching, tender and terrifying. From the gentle conversations between Richard and Anthony to the starkly contrasting mocking of the gang, Considine is flawless. It is because of his performance that Richard remains the audience's hero long after his behaviour has slipped from the understandable into the psychopathic. We never stop believing that he is a good man gone wrong, that he is tortured, and we feel his pain. As the tag line to the film says, "He's in all of us."

Significantly the subjects of Richard’s brutality are also never portrayed as anything other than human beings, and in many ways they have a likeable “Stoner” quality. They're far from innocent and at times their behaviour is beyond reproach and deserving of punishment, but we never feel that what they get is what they deserve. These are normal people, however repugnant their pasts, and so it doesn't take a superhuman monster to terrify them, just a soldier with a grudge.

As the story of Dead Man's Shoes draws to a close Richard's murderous intent is fully realised, but just as we begin to lose our remaining empathy for him there is a twist and the full horror behind his motivations are revealed. The plot details are not going to be given away here but it is a clever cinematic sleight of hand that leaves you reeling.

Trust me, it's worth the wait.

In many ways this film is a morality tale, and one with almost religious undertones concerned with vengeance versus redemption. As Richard remarks before embarking on his bloody path to self-destruction:

"God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and allow them into Heaven. I can't live with that."

In the closing scenes of Dead Man's Shoes we do see Richard regain some semblance of his humanity and are offered at least a degree of belief in the possibility of repentance and also forgiveness. This relief is only brief though because at the end of this story everybody loses.

There is no happy ending in Dead Man's Shoes.

T. Callaghan