“When they get to heaven they’ll be forgiven. God will forgive them and let them in. And I can’t live with that.”
I’ve been a fan of Paddy Considine’s since I saw him in his utterly frightening performance as a mentally imbalanced recluse in “A Room for Romeo Brass.” I also loved him in the schmaltzy albeit well-intentioned family drama in “In America,” and he flexes his keen ability to be both menacing and vulnerable with Shane Meadows’ “Dead Man’s Shoes”. Meadows’ revenge thriller is a very visceral revenge film that delves in the fall out from the breaking of a cardinal rule: Don’t ever fuck with a man’s family.
After returning from the military, Richard discovers that his mentally unstable younger brother has been befriended a group of gangsters who proceeded in taking advantage of him and brutally abusing him. Now he wants payback, and he won’t relent until every one of them suffers a brutal death. There’s nothing I love more than a good revenge flick; and director Shane Meadows pulls off a masterful hybrid of crime thriller, revenge film, and a slasher right down to the masked maniac that Richard becomes. Richard is a soldier who has seen enough violence, and can sneak in and do his job, and he does so in the most unspectacular ways.
Richard is a mentally unstable war veteran who just wants to make sure the people that hurt his brother pay, and Considine’s Richard is an utterly frightening anti-hero who performs his acts of vengeance without a pause, and gives a large satisfied smile with every act. And for good reason. His methods of revenge begin with a comedic tone as the gangsters begin turning on one another, and finding humor in the prankster that smashes their homes, and spray paints their hair. But as the story progresses, the incidents become darker and darker until people start turning up dead. Director Meadows’s film seeks out to be far from your normal tale about a man seeking vengeance.
It’s made crystal clear by the shocking second half that reveals a plot twist that sums up Richard’s mentality. Richard is by no means a perfect man, and he’s one who blames himself for his brother’s death as much as he blames the group that tormented him. The relentlessly cruel methods in which the gangsters inflict pain on Richard’s brother allows us to view this journey in Richard’s mind set, and Richard’s plans involve a lot more psychological torment than physical violence. There are some very memorable scenes staged, including one confrontation on the street with the gang’s ring leader, and the finale.
With the well done script, Meadows keeps his central character a complex human being seeking justification and atoning for his own personal sins. And gladly Meadows never turns him in to an action movie cliché. Considine is much too talented to be resorted to such gimmicks. “Dead Man’s Shoes” is an original, complex, and utterly gruesome revenge parable, and never portrays its characters as black and white. It’s a criminally overlooked and ignored crime thriller, and one that should have skyrocketed Considine to leading man status.