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Great Film overall

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A film of raw, unrelenting and passionate power, This is England remains underrated director Shane Meadows greatest singular achievement and one of Britain's all-time great feature length films.Spawning a collection of worthy mini-series follow ups in the years that followed its critically praised initial release, This is England not only deals with a politically charged time in the United Kingdom's Maggie Thatcher lead period of the 80's but examines the deep undercurrent of racism often present in otherwise civilised western countries all the while being a touching coming of age story of Thomas Turgoose's 12 year old Shaun.Meadows, who has also displayed a power as a filmmaker to make uncompromising films of almost documentary style realism, evidenced in other standout efforts like A Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man's Shoes, directs This is England with both an unflinching eye and a compassionate hand as his believable and lovable characters experience life changing events all the while surrounded by a country that has reached a boiling point of tension and rage.Led by Turgoose's incredible well-constructed debut turn as the vulnerable Shaun who finds himself a part of a ragtag group of skinheads and rascals, This is England's cast that includes such recognisable faces as Joseph Gilgun as the lovable larrikin Woody, Vicky McClure as the deep thinking Lol, Andrew Shim as the Jamaican/British Milky and a young Jack O'Connell as feisty teenager Pukey, is one of the Britain's best ever assembled casts, the case of the perfect performers coming together as a whole that proved it was no lighting in a bottle occurrence when the large portion of the cast returned again for Meadow's award winning TV follow-ups.As good as both Meadows and his cast are in This is England, this film is owned completely by one of the modern eras most commanding and attention grabbing performances by Stephan Graham as the racist, tormented and charismatic Combo.A performer who has proved time and time again that his one of the best working in the business, yet a performer who has yet to receive his just rewards, Graham's Combo is a creation that's hard to describe, a fully inhabited incarnation that can only be achieved by actors at the very top of their game.When Combo makes his entrance into This is England's characters somewhat carefree lives at the 30 minute mark of the film, Meadows film marks its change in direction and tone and enters into an hour or so of cinematic brilliance as we're driven along by Graham's tour de force turn and a story that may seem on the surface to be simplistic, but ends up flooring us with a knockout punch that will linger days after initial viewing.Encapsulating the time and place of this period incredibly well, a landscape full of checkered shirts, suspenders, shaved heads, Doc Martins and a killer soundtrack, Meadows team-up with his performers, that is steered on its powerful course by Graham, create the world that makes This is England such a special and in many ways important film experience.Final Say – Far from an easy watch, This is England may not be everyone's cup of tea but Shane Meadow's gut-punch of a film remains to this day one of the most deceptively powerful and memorably casted films of the 21st century that includes an outstanding debut performance from Thomas Turgoose and a career best turn from Stephen Graham.5 Ben Sherman shirts out of 5

This is England is a slice of life nostalgia for the skinhead brigade. Set in the summer of 1983, it is a coming of age tale of Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) a 12 year old lad in a working class estate whose father died fighting in the Falkland's war.In one day he gets picked on several times and later gets befriended by a local gang of assorted street kids, some of whom are skinheads. They are into ska, reggae and new wave music and spend their time committing vandalism. Shaun endears himself to their leader Woody and gets accepted by them. For the first time in a long while he is having fun being part of that gang.When Woody's friend Combo (Steven Graham) returns after a spell in prison things quickly change. Combo experienced racism in jail, he joined up with white extremists and upon release he advocates racist and nationalist views even going to National Front meetings. Woody who is more apolitical and has a black friend wants nothing to do with him.Shaun and a few others ally with Combo but he is a ticking time bomb. Pretty soon they are threatening the local Asian kids and robbing the Asian shopkeeper armed with a machete (who somehow never called the police.) You figure that pretty soon, Combo will do serious harm to someone.Director Shane Meadows does a good job in recreating the early 1980s scene in his film from art direction to costume design. It is obvious he recalls this era well. However there is nothing in the story I found intriguing or even surprising.I am at a loss why so many critics became so orgasmic over this film unless they got some kind of perverted arousal to see scenes of young Asian lads playing football being threatened by a grown up white bully with a knife. Maybe secretly they sided with Combo and wanted their country back!Being a teenager myself in that era I met these kind of nationalist skinheads, always complaining why they were doing poorly and others doing better than them. They were always threatening people who were younger than them or making sure they outnumbered them first before beating them up. Even now over 30 years later they are still moaning and laying blame to whatever immigrant groups they can point to for their own failures.Meadows elicits good performances from a young cast but I was left nonplussed with the script and thinking about it we had many similar shows on television in the 1980s such as Going Out which starred Perry Benson who also features in this movie.

This Is England is most definitely one of the very best British films of the twenty-first century, and for me ranks as Shane Meadows most outstanding to date. Meadows draws on his own personal experiences as a skinhead during the early 1980's. This Is England is set during the summer months of 1983 at the time of "Thatcher's Britain" and indeed the era of the skinheads, punk, racism and fascism.Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is a lonely 11 year old kid growing up on a rough council estate in the North Of England. He is grieving the sudden loss of his father after he was killed in the horrific Falklands War. Encountering incessant bullying at school, Shaun meets a gang of friendly, multi-cultural, dope-smoking skinheads, headed by Woody (Joseph Gilgunn) who immediately are drawn to his sadness and confusion and subsequently take the boy under their wing. However when one of the gang's old members Combo, (Stephen Graham) a vicious, racist thug and bully, is released from prison, Shaun is manipulated by Combo's way of thinking and racist attitude and turns into a thug himself, convinced he would be making his late Dad proud. After Combo brutally beats up Shaun's friend Milky (Andrew Shim) and exposes his own deep vulnerability and unbalanced mental state, Shaun comes back down to earth (and his senses), realising the lifestyle he'd been leading was not really for him, nor would it have made his Dad proud.Though the first half of This Is England is touchingly funny, drawing on the allure and fun of being in a gang, the second half soon makes way for a much darker, raw and gritty nature, with many violent episodes, highlighting the brutally stark racism that existed at the time (and still does unfortunately!. Shane Meadows shrewdly evokes the total working-class despair of "Thatcher's Britain", capturing the era impeccably well and is all impressively authentic in detail.Like every other of Shane Meadows absolutely superb films, the acting and dialogue is astutely naturalistic, drawing you in from the opening scene. Most outstanding of all is the immensely talented youngster Thomas Turgoose who's almost stark performance never once shrinks from being anything but powerful and convincing. Indeed the cast are all thoroughly excellent that includes another notably powerful turn from the ever-brilliant Stephen Graham as Combo; Joseph Gilgunn as the lovable, kindly rogue Woody who is the leader of the gang that Shaun first joins and who also refuses to be brainwashed by Combo's unhinged way of thinking and racial hatred; Jo Hartley as Shaun's mum Cynth who upon meeting the gang headed by Woody becomes charmed by them , after having had serious reservations when first seeing her young son with a shaved head; Andrew Shim as the friendly Milky; Vicky McClure as the more sensible, level-headed Lol and Rosamund Hanson as the eccentric but likable Smell.Truly an out and out masterpiece, This Is England is an often funny, often shocking and often deeply moving portrait of a moment in British cultural history.Ian Phillips

This movie was somewhat tough to know how to take. On the one hand - as a movie about coming of age - it's a fairly straight-forward, effective film. Shaun's anger and depression about the death of his father fighting in the Falklands is slowly eating away at him, and his new skinhead friends don't help him learn to cope with that, but they do give him a distraction and a sense of belonging that he obviously craves. Shaun is easily influenced, and Woody becomes a type of father figure to him, helping him find his own place in the world around him. On the other hand, though, the movie in very insular. Combo talks about the money and jobs lost to immigrants, but aside from the Falklands, there doesn't seem to be any real link between this group of skins and the outside world. They never seem to actually exist in the real world, other than the mob's trip to the National Front rally and when Woody's girlfriend heads to work. So when Combo decides to espouse his political points of view to the rest of the gang, it feels hollow and almost disjointed; here is this group of skinheads who never seem to work and do nothing except sit around, drink beer, smoke pot, and listen to records. And as Combo has spent the last several years in prison, he doesn't feel like someone who would be in the know about the political situation in England at the time. However, the details of the movie are fairly accurate. The National Front did play a huge role in attracting skinheads to their cause in the 80s, and the fashions are pretty spot on, as is the music. Although I think that the movie doesn't make much of an effort to pander to the uninitiated. If you don't know skinhead culture, you're going to find yourself lost on occasion. But by and large, most of the movie can be understood and appreciated without knowledge of what it is to be skinhead. Overall a decent movie, if not a bit two dimensional.