DB7

Dream team deliver a nightmare vision

The powerful 'Dead Man's Shoes' heralds director Shane Meadows and his tough-guy star Paddy Considine as the Scorsese and De Niro of the British film industry, says S F Said

Back in 1999, Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine joked about being the Scorsese and De Niro of the Midlands. They'd just made A Room For Romeo Brass, Meadows's second feature as director and Considine's acting debut.

It was a wonderful film, but their comparisons with the partnership that produced Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Raging Bull were firmly tongue-in-cheek.

Five years on, those comparisons don't seem so cheeky any more. Their latest film together, Dead Man's Shoes, released on October 1, is as powerful a piece of work as Taxi Driver was in its day. It's Meadows's most mature movie yet, while Considine has created a character as memorable as Taxi Driver's anti-hero, Travis Bickle.

"It's crazy," says Meadows, now 31. "We were laughing about those Scorsese/De Niro things, but now it's actually starting to come to fruition. Because, as a team, we really bring out the best in each other. I think there's something instinctive that I've got with Paddy that I've not got with anybody else the world over."

It hasn't been easy to get to this point. Critics loved Romeo Brass, but it was badly handled by its distributors, and bombed at the box office. "It was heart-breaking," he recalls. "Absolute shambles, that was."

Meadows then came under pressure from his financiers, Film Four, to deliver a big hit. The result was Once Upon a Time in the Midlands: a likeable, entertaining film, but not in the same league as Romeo Brass. Though packed with British stars (Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans, Kathy Burke, Ricky Tomlinson) it didn't become the hit he'd hoped for.

"That's what happens when you take a film and over-develop it," he says. "There was all this talk of Shane Meadows, making him marketable. Everyone is talking about how they can get you to the wider public. Sitting around in a boardroom for 12 months, squeezing all the organic juice out of the project.

"Film Four, they were going down, and they needed a big commercial success to keep them afloat. And I did spot it, and I didn't jump out. If you ask me, do I wish I'd not made it - I probably wish I'd made it 12 months earlier, when the script was first written."

Considine, meanwhile, went on to star in Pawel Pawlikowski's The Last Resort and My Summer of Love (released next month), as well as Jim Sheridan's In America. His career has taken off; he's currently shooting a film with Russell Crowe.

In just five years, he's become one of the most exciting young actors in the world. But it's with Meadows that he's made his most powerful work.

"Paddy rang me the other day from his Russell Crowe film," says Meadows, "and he said that as much as he's enjoying it, now he's seen Dead Man's Shoes, he knows he's got to keep making that kind of film."

The two of them went back to basics for this movie. Drawing on improvisational techniques they'd used in short films together, they developed an idea for a feature that could be delivered for less than £1 million, working fast and cheap, on raw energy and intuition.

"It was below the radar; there was no pressure on it to succeed," says Meadows. "It's funny: when you try to make a success like Midlands, you almost do the opposite. But, when you make your most uncompromising work, suddenly people seem to respond to that."

Dead Man's Shoes is breath-takingly uncompromising. Considine plays an ex-soldier who returns home to wreak vengeance on the gang of low-lifes who terrorised his brother. We know from the first moment we see him, walking purposefully across a mythic-looking moorland landscape, that he has trouble in mind. With a bristly beard and a stare that never wavers for one moment, there is a frightening intensity about him, a sense of dark forces barely held in check, about to erupt.

"I think Paddy's presence in Dead Man's Shoes is absolutely staggering," says Meadows. "To hold the screen the way he does, he really is a man possessed in that film."

But Meadows also seems to have reached a new level of intensity here. Around Considine's performance, he builds a story that is by turns humorous, touching and drop-dead terrifying. Every scene is compelling, taking unexpected twists and turns that reveal a formidable command of narrative.

He still has a lovely comic touch ("I can't make a film without light, I just won't do it, I'm not capable of it") and a pitch-perfect control of tone, but the blend is darker now; preoccupations with regret underscore this piece.

It's there in the photography; those misty moorlands have a sombre, brooding stillness. It's there too in the music, the dark strains of alternative country artists such as Smog, Calexico and Will Oldham that he's chosen for his soundtrack. It's there in the editing, intricately structured to build towards a spine-tingling denouement.

Five years ago, Meadows was the brash new kid on the block, full of promise and potential. Today, he's a man who's known failure and disappointment - but it has only deepened his work.

He and Considine are already planning their next movie together. He's writing another on his own; developing a third with Romeo Brass co-writer Paul Fraser (this one a magical fantasy story), while trying to raise funds for his long-cherished dream project, King of the Gypsies. The next few years could be very interesting indeed for Meadows.

"I feel like a born-again filmmaker," he says. "It's almost a new beginning for me. Making Dead Man's Shoes, taking a step backwards has actually taken me forwards. I feel like now I know who I am, I'm assured of what I'm making, and I'm not so worried about what the world thinks.

"Because I know that when I did worry about that, I didn't get it right. I was making it for 50 people, rather than for myself first. And that's the big difference."

Hugo

Sorry to disagree DB7, but no way is DEAD MAN'S SHOES anything like as powerful a film as TAXI DRIVER. Shane Meadows is extremely good in the details, the ensemble pieces where the baddies are arguing in their flat and their battered old car, and the drug taking scene are brilliant and funny. The overall concept, however, of a classic revenge drama taking place in the present day Midlands just does not work and i'm afraid that even the admirable Paddy Considine can't quite pull it off.

DB7

Dead Man's Shoes wins at Dinard


The film is set in Derbyshire
Revenge thriller Dead Man's Shoes has scooped top prize at the British Film Festival in Dinard, France.
Shane Meadows' movie tells the story of two brothers who return to their hometown to get even with the men who used to torture their younger brother.

The Hitchcock d'Or award was announced on Saturday by the festival jury, who said the decision was unanimous.

Meadows thanked an "incredible" audience at the ceremony. The film was released in the UK on 1 October.

The Hitchcock d'Or is named after the legendary director, who once lived in the Breton town where the festival is held.

Actor Paddy Considine, who also appeared in Meadows' A Room for Romeo Brass in 1999, plays the lead role and also collaborated on the script.

Hugo

Despite your advocacy of DEAD MAN'S SHOES, DB7, I get the distinct impression that you have not actually seen this film yourself yet.
For example the story is not about two brothers returning to their hometown to avenge a younger brother, it is about one brother (Paddy Considine) avenging his younger brother. The younger brother appears as a character in the first two thirds of the film but it gradually becomes clear that he has been dead for many years and his appearance is a figment of Considine's guilt-ridden imagination.
I am not saying that DEAD MAN'S SHOES is a bad film, it is in fact very entertaining and enjoyable, but it is no masterpiece. It is quite unrealistic; where are the Derbyshire police when all this mayhem is going on? And I also found the ending very unsatisfactory.
Incidentally I would be very interested to learn at what period of his life did Alfred Hitchcock live in Dinard ?

DB7

I've not seen it yet, can't recall saying I had. The coming soon section is merely a noticeboard for forthcoming events/releases.

Hugo

In that case I think it would be useful if you could acknowledge your sources.

DB7

If you click on the yellow link it takes you to the source. The other is PA.

Guybrush Threepwood

Ahh....that'll be a SPOILER then......cheers


Threep.

Hugo

Thanks DB7, I never realised the significance of the yellow titles before. Very useful.

Sorry Threep, it was thoughtless of me to reveal this, although in fact it is not a vital part of the main narrative and should not spoil your enjoyment of this film.