Film Analysis: Dead Man Shoes Part 1

Previously I talked about a great American film which has had a great input to me but seeing as I am hoping my future to lead towards British filmmaking, I thought I should focus on that somewhat more in this blog. There are load upon loads are great examples of British filmmaking. We have had “The Crying Game”, “In The Name Of The Father”, “Snatch”, “This Is England” & the list goes on, but one film that I usually think of when thinking of British films is “Dead Man’s Shoe’s”. “ Dead Man’s Shoes” was made by Shane Meadows who has directed & written great films and dramas such as “This Is England” “This is England 86 & 88,” “A Room For Romeo Brass” and more. Shane is well known and respected for his approach of directing, he is very flexible when it comes to his actors, allowing them to improve scenes as long as it gets the main points across. He wrote this piece along with main actor Paddy Considine, Paddy has worked on many other projects with Shane as they are good mates.  

What I really like about this film is that it is a simple story with dominating characters, also the style it is presented adds the effect of grittiness it has. 

The narrative follows the character Richard and his brother Anthony, we are unsure of the year and date but from the style of the film I would assume it was meant to be the early nineties, the time of the film is set into two sections of the present day where Richard has come home and eight years earlier where his brother was hanging around with a gang.

It begins with Richard and Anthony setting themselves up in an abounded farm and it opens with the brilliant piece of dialog, it truly sets the sense of what is to come in the film; the line is “God will forgive them. He’ll forgive them and allow them into heaven. I can’t live with that” from this we learn that one of the themes of the film in vengeance, it also tells us a bit on Richards’s character, his motive of the film. Richard’s purpose of the film is to get revenge on a group of drug dealing wannabe hard men bullies. At this moment in time we are unsure on what these people have done but it is something to do with Anthony as he is the one pointing out the lads involved to Richard. From there on Richard starts to stalk the weakest of the group, Herbie, he follows him around and starts to act irregular by having mood swings.

Once Herbie reveals the rest of the gang to the audience and goes to get high with his friends, they realise who Richard was and start remembering what they had done. In the flashbacks we watch the process of this gang bringing Anthony into their home and basically getting him into a state to bully easier, making smoke, drink and do drugs.  The flashback segments range from 10 seconds to 2 minutes but each segment is more disturbing as the next showing how the gang is run by Sonny.

Later that night Richard begins his first part of revenge by breaking into the gangs houses and just messing with them, he robs all the drugs, graffiti’s the houses and the people. This is a first taste of what to come, Richard wants everyone in the gang to beware of what is coming and the fact he came into their houses and did this shows that he is capable of getting all of them. The gang then try to think who told Richard this and where to find him so they visit and attack a girl that was involved in the incident with Anthony. On the drive back they see Richard waiting for them so Sonny goes to confront him thinking Richard would be worried but Richard makes it very clear who should be afraid and gives them a head start to go and prepare. Obvious the gang doesn’t really take notice, they think they can get him the next day with no bother but during the night whilst the entire gang are just chilling at their local hangout, Richard brutally murders one of the members and gets out without even being seen.

 

The gang are now truly afraid of Richard and decide to go and take care of him before it’s too late, they plan to get him out in the open and simply shoot him but whilst they are trying this Sonny accidently shoots his friend and drives off. Richard again shows that he is still not afraid and is encouraging them to come for him. The gang retreat back to their home and arm themselves expecting Richard to turn up any time soon but he is already their prepared for them, to get them in a defenceless state just like Anthony, he drugs them with the large stash he stole previously. Once they are in a bad state Richard starts to bully them as they did to Anthony and then kills them one by one but he doesn’t kill Herbie until the end, here Richard wants information on another person that isn’t in the gang anymore and has moved away. Richard treats Herbie kindly to give the information up but still kills him anyway.

Richard continues his method of stalking the bully but comes to realise that he has a good life now and has turned everything around, but his passion for revenge is still in control and sends the final member a message by giving the guys children the gas mask he uses throughout and a blade he has been using.  This gang member, worried, reveals what happened to Anthony and by this point we can come to the conclusion that Anthony is dead and the Anthony that has been following Richard is just a figment of his imagination. Richard takes this member out to the place Anthony died and instead of killing him, forces the gang member to kill Richard because he has changed and moved on to a decent bloke but Richard will kill him and his family if he doesn’t die. Richard does the modest thing and allowed himself to die.

This is an ace British film, each aspect of the film is more powerful then the next; plot, style, camera techniques, locations but more importantly the actors & character development. The cast of this film was brilliant. 

Character	Actor
Richard	Paddy Considine
Anthony	Toby Kebbell
Sonny	Gary Stretch
Patti	Emily Aston
Soz	Neil Bell
Jo	Jo Hartley
Big Al	Seamus O'Neil
Herbie	Stuart Wolfenden
Tuff	Paul Sadot
Mark	Paul Hurstfield
Gypsy John	George Newton
Craig	Craig Considine
Matt	Matt Considine
Elvis	Andrew Shim

I love everything about this film, simplicity of the story, the characters everything but what I think adds the effect is the quality of the film itself, if I hadn’t done research one I watched the film I wouldn’t have ever guessed it was made in 2004; I would have accepted early nineties. This technique is done deliberately to achieve a gritty effect which adds so much to the atmosphere of every intense scene. It also helps understand what time period this is meant to be set in.

Now to me there aren’t many differences in the characters apart from the main three which are; Richard (Paddy), Anthony (Toby Kebbell) & Sonny (Gary Stretch), the other gang members seem very similar too each other but they still play an important part to the film. What I especially like about the characters is that they seem so realistic, not anyone of them is over the top in the character they play. For example I could imagine if anyone else made the film, Sonny would be a massive man that fight anyone and Paddy would like weak so that it become a “David and Goliath” film, also I would expect for Sonny and Paddy to have this massive fight at the end if anyone else made it. Shane does a great job creating these realistic characters.

• Richard- Richard is a unique character in the film, he is the main protagonist of the film and we follow his path to getting vengeance for his brother. What I like about this character is the realism of his insanity been broken by the lost of a love one.  Throughout we get the impression that he is only getting revenge because it was the gangs fault for his brother dying and it is only just they die too, but in the last scene we learn that Richard didn’t really care for brother, thought less maybe even nothing of him because of Anthony situation. He makes it clear that Anthony was an embarrassment to him and the only reason he joined the army was so that he wouldn’t be with his brother, and this is the reason in my eyes why he is getting revenge, not just the fact they killed his brother but the fact Richard thought he hated his brother and now that he left him to defend himself even thought Richard knows full well Anthony couldn’t look after himself. I’m not saying he wished his brother to die, just wanted time away from him. I think Richard is driven by guilt for thinking of his brother like this and leaving him, that’s why we see Anthony with Richard almost throughout even thought we learn he is dead. The ghost of Anthony haunts Richard as Richard blames himself. Richard has somewhat lost his sanity due to his guilt and this is shown by his  obsession with the gang that he has, he is constantly following them and the only time he takes a moment away is to plan out the next stage or he has deliberately lured them to him. He also comes off very clever, patient and furrow. He has planned out what to do with the gang and how to kill them. During the scene where the gang go to farm to kill Richard, Richard confronts Big Al, from this I gathered that he didn’t want to kill him yet, he had something planned for him, I got this by Richards action. All he does is looking intimidating and pushing him away as he doesn’t want to waste the kill yet but unfortunately Sonny accidently shoots Big Al, but it doesn’t bother Richard as he knows that the rest of the gang will  now feel guilty about what happened and more on edge because of it. We gather a bit of back story on Richard by the clothes he wears and the army bag he carries, this shows he may be mentally prepared to take a life which is more worrying then any gang member or drug dealer. from Richard actions we believe that he is a cold blooded killer that is driven by his desire for revenge and nothing will change that but right at the end his character changes. He has come for the final member of the gang, but this member has changed his life and actually regrets that day. In Richards last moment he does the honourable thing and kills himself, he realises that this final member life has more meaning than his own, also it goes along my theory of Richard guilt, he knows that he will feel guilty forever so it would be best to die so the guilt stops. I haven’t seen much of Paddy in films but I got to say this is by fare one of his best performances; it was simple, realistic and memorable.

• Sonny- now most people would say that Richard is their favourite character as he is a powerful one but I would have to say Sonny is my favourite character as it is a very believable character throughout. He is a realistic bully that thinks he is hard but as we all know they aren’t, just a bully. He does the stereotyping bully routine of making his gang members feel weak and low, he deals drugs and where the wannabe hard man leather jacket which a lot of real life wannabe hard men bullies do in life, they do all this because they think it’s the natural order of things. As we all know in real life when one of these pathetic excuses of a bully are confronted they show their true colours, completely afraid and panic in the situation of what to do. When a member is found dead in the toilet he tries to keep the leader role strong amongst the group by walking in and not being afraid but once he gets close enough he breaks down and cries which shows he is just an average man. This character is brilliantly written and brilliantly executed by Gary.