This Is England ***** (2006, Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Jo Hartley, Jack O’Connell, Joseph Gilgun, Kieran Hardcastle, Andrew Shim) – Classic Movie Review 3724

This Is England is, arguably, writer-director Shane Meadows’s chillingly realistic 2006 masterpiece. It features an astounding performance by Thomas Turgoose (aged 14) as Shaun, a 12-year-old English boy who becomes friends with bitter, racist, psychotic Combo (Stephen Graham) and a gang of skinheads in the summer of 1983.

With a scary performance by Graham, it is astonishingly visceral, almost a horror film, and sears indelibly into the memory. It’s quite a document of the times, an urgent, frightening report from the dark days of Thatcher’s Britain, showing that the long shadows of the past are always there to come back to haunt, terrify and damage you. But also showing, in the famous phrase, that the past is another country.

Meadows confirmed that the skinhead upbringing of the 12-year-old hero is a portrayal of his own childhood and that many of the events are drawn from his early life.

Also in the cast are Joseph Gilgun, Kieran Hardcastle, Andrew Shim, Jack O’Connell, and Andrew Ellis.

The film marks the feature debut of the 15-year-old Jack O’Connell, playing the juvenile delinquent Pukey Nicholls. O’Connell says: ‘I was initially cast as the lead role in it. So I was buzzing. And then they found Thomas Turgoose, so I got kind of demoted. It felt like that as well. I was upset. I did my best to get over it but I was slightly resentful.’

Shane Meadows

The film is dedicated to Turgoose’s mother, Sharon, who died in 2005.

Turgoose and O’Connell are in Eden Lake (2008) together.

The TV Mini-Series This Is England ’86 followed in 2010, This Is England ’88 in 2011 and This Is England ’90 in 2015, with Turgoose back as Shaun.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 3724

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