Dead Man's Shoes

A revenge film set in a small English town. Richard comes back from the army and arrives in the town with his brother Anthony. Anthony has a learning disability and Richard never leaves his side. There is a group of men in the town: five or six who deal drugs, think themselves important and cover for each other. Richard starts finding them one by one. The structure looks simple, but the narrative works through flashback, and as those images accumulate what happened becomes clear. What his brother's relationship with these men was changes in the middle of the film. The register differs from classical revenge films. The men are not terrifying but pitiful; small, stupid and unprepared. What Richard does is not presented as heroic either. It was made on a very small budget by a method close to improvisation; the director and the lead actor wrote the screenplay together. Paddy Considine plays Richard and Toby Kebbell plays Anthony; it is Kebbell's first film. Shane Meadows directed. One of the strongest examples of its genre for anyone who likes British independent cinema and hard revenge stories. Before you watch, know this: the film shows violence directly and its ending brings no relief.