A Room for Romeo Brass **** (1998, Andrew Shim, Ben Marshall, Paddy Considine, Vicky McClure, Frank Harper, Julia Ford, James Higgins, Ladene Hall, Bob Hoskins, Shane Meadows) – Classic Film Review 481

Co-writer-director Shane Meadows’s 1998 film reunites him with co-writer Paul Fraser and cinematographer Ashley Rowe, after their success with 1997’s boxing club movie Twenty Four Seven.

The friendship of 12-year-old best mates Romeo Brass and Gavin (Andrew Shim, Ben Marshall) is put to the test after Morell (Paddy Considine, in his film debut), a naïve, eccentric and dangerous stranger, saves them from being beaten up. Morell befriends the two boys and they help their new pal to date Romeo’s beautiful elder sister Ladine (Vicky McClure).

But Morell gradually becomes more violent after the sister rejects him. And the two buddies find themselves being drawn into a dangerous world of desperation, violence and obsession that threatens to tear them apart.

This is a funny, scary, very well-made coming-of-age yarn from a confident Meadows, with excellent performances from Shim and Marshall, as well as from Considine.

Frank Harper (as Joe Brass), Julia Ford, James Higgins, Ladene Hall (Carol Brass) and Bob Hoskins (Steven Laws) also appear. Hoskins previously starred in Meadows’s 1997 film Twenty Four Seven. Meadows has a cameo as a Male Nurse.

Shim is also known for Meadows’s films This Is England (2006), Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002).

Filming Location: Calverton, Nottingham.

Sadly on 8 August 2012, Hoskins announced his retirement from acting after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2011 and on 29 April 2014 he died from pneumonia, aged 71. He appeared in films such as The Long Good Friday (1980), Mona Lisa (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Mermaids (1990) and Hook (1991).

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