'Dead Man's Shoes'

Paddy Considine is an ex-soldier named Richard who comes home to a small town in England to see his retarded brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell), who had been hanging out with the local gang of drug-dealing thugs and been cruelly abused. Richard is out for blood, and after breaking into various gang members' houses and pulling pranks, he tells the ringleader, Sonny (Gary Stretch), that he'll kill them all—and they can even try to come and get him first if they'd like. Fortunately for Richard, Sonny's guys are the stupidest hoods in the world. Dead Man's Shoes is all about revenge, but in trying to be one of those serious revenge films that questions violence while indulging in it, it manages to keep virtually all the characters unsympathetic and uninteresting. Director Shane Meadows based the movie on a true story about a young man from his hometown who died. Presumably, then, Meadows gets some sort of catharsis out of it. Too bad we don't.