This Is England

Writer/director Shane Meadows injects some life into the coming of age genre with This Is England, a real as hell, semi-autobiographical drama about Shaun, (Thomas Turgoose) an 11 year old boy in 1980s England who joins up with a merry band of skinheads. At first, it's just some harmless misbehavior with a gang of older kids, but when the group's former leader, Combo (Stephen Graham) returns from prison with more heady, aggressive ideas about national pride things take a turn for the worse. Shaun's misplaced rage over the death of his father at war only furthers his desire to act in what he believes to be the best interests of his nation. It also helps him build an unhealthy connection to the equally lonely Combo, whose undefined past seems to contain many disappointments of its own.

Shaun's involvement with the gang evolves very quickly from a sweet, adopted family connection to a brutal, dangerous descent into darker territory. Meadows gift is in defining the difference between harmless thugs and dangerous ones, catching the insincere machismo in some characters' dialogue while reinforcing the terrifying sincerity of others' words. He's also drawn a truly unnerving performance out of the young Turgoose whose beyond his years commitment to the role only furthers the painful truth of what's happening. If he'd been anything like most precocious kid stars, the spell would be broken. But he's so undeniably believable in conveying both Shaun's surface swagger and his inner torment that there's no evading the impact of this story.

From start to finish, This Is England, is a wonderfully written, directed, and performed feature with flawless attention to period detail and a flair for finding ways to keep even the most potentially overstylized moments seeming truthful. It's rare to find a film that knows the right way to use a musical montage nowadays but Meadows has several that function with dead on accuracy, particularly a closing moment set to a stirring cover of The Smith's "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want." This is a film where each scene is realized to perfection with enough complexity and awkward imperfection to make it feel like real life unfolding. Meadows has delivered a mini-masterpiece.

Grade: A