Review: Dead Man's Shoes

Like the creepy mask that Paddy Considine's ex-army protagonist wears in Shane Meadow's accomplished thriller, the placid countryside setting of Dead Man's Shoes conceals a melting pot of anger and tension. Set, like most of Meadows' films, in the Midlands, Considine plays Richard, a bearded, grim-looking ex-squaddie who returns to his hometown, to find it still being rousted by the same gang of petty thieves as when he left. They run a small time drug-dealing business bossed by the slick Sonny, all leather jackets and hair gel. It becomes clear through a series of subtle black-and-white flashbacks that the gang, led by Sonny, inducted Richard’s mentally-vulnerable brother Anthony into their fold whilst Richard was away, and systematically abused him.
This explains the furious rage etched under Richard's beard which threatens to boil over whenever he encounters a member of Sonny's crew in the local pool hall or out in the street. He begins systematically haunting them, his purloined army gas mask lending him an ominous, sinister quality. Unsatisfied with purveying simple scares, murder follows naturally, and Richard begins dispatching members of the gang by axe and knife.
The artfully-handled final third of the film gradually and skilfully reveals the predominant theme here: guilt. This film is as much about fraternal relationships as it is about growing up on a council estate where the bad boys at school become the petty drug-dealers, and of the unspoken desire everyone harbours of 'getting out'. Richard feels restrained by Anthony; the overriding emotion of Anthony's simply brain is that of brotherly pride.
There is more heart, and ultimately regret, to this film than the initial, brutal revenge façade suggests. Anthony brings Richard his rare moments of happiness, yet also his tragic thrust. And why do we wear masks? To hide our face from others, or to hide it from ourselves?