The bucolic, rain-drenched English countryside hides awful secrets in Shane Meadows's thriller Dead Man's Shoes. Richard, a decorated soldier played by Paddy Considine, returns to the small town where his mentally disabled younger brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) was cruelly abused by a gang of drug dealers. Every bit as merciless as its main character, Dead Man's Shoes is an uncompromising story of abuse, guilt, complicity, and revenge.
The lines are drawn early in the film: on one side, Richard, trailed by his shuffling, muttering brother, and on the other, a bunch of small-time crooks and incompetent dope fiends who drive around town in a Citroen blasting gangsta rap. Considine is an accomplished actor and he doesn't disappoint in the role of the avenger whose kindness toward his brother is darkened by the coiled anger--anger impossible to understand until late in the movie. He metes out his commando-style brand of retribution, at first by intimidating the gangsters with spray paint and a mask. But when he unleashes techniques of psychological warfare and bloody violence, our sympathies are likely to shift. Compared to the frat boy hazing that we see the brother subjected to in flashbacks, Richard's attacks seem disproportionately cruel. The wrongs done to Anthony don't match the ferocity of the revenge.
Paddy Considine in Dead Man's Shoes
Most action movies are, in fact, about revenge: from Die Hard to Snakes on a Plane, it's all about payback. For this formula to work, the villain's crimes have to be so despicable that it's easy to rejoice in the good guys' justified use of violence. It's more rare that a movie dramatizes retribution in a way that doesn't turn it into a triumphant spectacle. Much like Spielberg's Munich and last year's The Warrior, Dead Man's Shoes takes a more complicated view of the ethics of revenge and the way the lust for it can corrupt the best intentions. Based on a screenplay by Considine, Shane Meadow has crafted a tight, mean little movie that reveals how torture makes victims out of everybody. Even the most blameless bystander ends up with blood on his hands.
