Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

ereinion This movie is full of tragedy, yet also redemption. It is a story about one young boy who ends up in the wrong crowd. It is 1983 and Shaun is a 12-yearold boy whose father was killed a year ago in the Falklands War. Worth noting is the choice of year, as it was a time of major political and social upheaval in Britain. Miner strikes and dissatisfaction with Thatcher's regime. It is this dissatisfaction that also is shown here, albeit from a very extreme perspective of the skinhead leader Combo. Combo is a character full of contradictions, as he is both a racist and nationalist, and at the same time in denouncing the Falklands War as a rubbish Thatcher-invention, he is also talking the language of the common man, the oppressed man. Those who have been hurt by the war the most are people like him, people who had no grudge against Argentina but had to fight in that war, millions of miles away from home. While at the same time many so-called "respectable" and "politically correct" Englishmen and Britons supported that war and many still think it was right to fight it. This shows the yawning gap between the working class and the upper class. Working class is sick of having to take foreigners from third world countries "taking over" their neighbourhoods with their stores and restaurants and "taking their jobs", while the government does nothing and profits from the foreign "injection".Shaun is a kind of objective figure here, who is never too much on either side, even though he accepts Combo as a sort of father figure or big brother figure. I think even the ones among us who hold some kind of grudge towards the immigrants, especially ones from afar, will feel sickened by the scene where Combo holds a knife against an Indian boy's throat, just because he and his friends played football on "his" court. Even if some of us have had negative experiences with for instance a Pakistani or Indian, watching this makes us pity that Indian boy. I know it made me feel like that and it took away any kind of grudge I might have felt towards their kind. Stephen Graham does a great job as Combo and the young Tom Turgoose also is very effective for a debutante and for his age. This is a film everyone should watch and learn from. It is a young boy's spiritual education, as Shaun finally realizes that his father didn't die fighting for the nationalist, racist England but for a united England. And everyone must accept that their society has changed.Combo is one unhappy, tormented character. A guy who was obviously scarred early in life and cannot feel anything but anger, or can he? Despite always trying to look as cold and hard as possible, he harbours feelings for Lol, the girlfriend of his friend who then turns away from him because of his racism, after Combo returns from prison. After he gets rebuked by Lol for confessing his feelings for her, he gets more dangerous. He only wants to feel loved and to have a good life, but can't. He hangs out with losers for the most part. One exception is the mild-mannered Milky, the half-Jamaican. This all makes you wonder: is Combo really a racist? Or is it only anger and frustration that make him say and do racist things? This is a very strong character study and one of the few films I have seen to try and deconstruct what lies behind, or inside, an average racist and his mind.I give this film a 9, because it is a very compelling and important film and a good lesson for any young man who may harbour some kind of animosity towards people of other race. Feeding on hatred and living on hatred will only make you miserable and end in tragedy, as it does for Combo. But one can hope that he is headed towards finding redemption as well, while Shaun found the right way to go.

eryui The story takes place in England 80s, populated by good and bad skinheads. The main actor, a come to age kid, who poses as an adult in the models that surround him, who drinks and swears but remains good, where prevails his desire to play, to have friends and fall in love, is tender. The topics are many, but the thickness is lacking, it lacks some key to entertainment, it is a little boring.There are very few emotional impact, the movie looks amateurish and it not tell a really interesting story. The soundtrack is good, but the film remains bland.Wasted youth, looking for a place to belong is nothing new, far from a masterpiece and too overrated.

kikkapi20 It's 1983 and school is out. Twelve-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is a lonely boy growing up in a grim coastal town in northern England, whose father died fighting in the Falklands War. Over the course of the summer holiday he befriends a group of local skinheads. With his pent- up anger and frustration, Shaun finds exactly what he needs in the gang – mischief, mayhem and brotherhood. He also meets the volatile and boorish Combo (Stephen Graham), an older skinhead who sees himself in Shaun. Adopting Shaun as his protégé, Combo leads the gang down a hate-spewing path that culminates in an irreversible act of violence. An uncanny evocation of a quietly pivotal moment in time, THIS IS ENGLAND bears witness to a young boy's coming of age while Britain's empire fades, Thatcherism devastates the working class, and skinhead culture takes a violent turn toward racist nationalism. Ambitious, deeply personal, and beautifully realized, THIS IS ENGLAND firmly establishes Shane Meadows as one of the most compelling filmmakers of his generation.

low_flying This movie was somewhat tough to know how to take. On the one hand - as a movie about coming of age - it's a fairly straight-forward, effective film. Shaun's anger and depression about the death of his father fighting in the Falklands is slowly eating away at him, and his new skinhead friends don't help him learn to cope with that, but they do give him a distraction and a sense of belonging that he obviously craves. Shaun is easily influenced, and Woody becomes a type of father figure to him, helping him find his own place in the world around him. On the other hand, though, the movie in very insular. Combo talks about the money and jobs lost to immigrants, but aside from the Falklands, there doesn't seem to be any real link between this group of skins and the outside world. They never seem to actually exist in the real world, other than the mob's trip to the National Front rally and when Woody's girlfriend heads to work. So when Combo decides to espouse his political points of view to the rest of the gang, it feels hollow and almost disjointed; here is this group of skinheads who never seem to work and do nothing except sit around, drink beer, smoke pot, and listen to records. And as Combo has spent the last several years in prison, he doesn't feel like someone who would be in the know about the political situation in England at the time. However, the details of the movie are fairly accurate. The National Front did play a huge role in attracting skinheads to their cause in the 80s, and the fashions are pretty spot on, as is the music. Although I think that the movie doesn't make much of an effort to pander to the uninitiated. If you don't know skinhead culture, you're going to find yourself lost on occasion. But by and large, most of the movie can be understood and appreciated without knowledge of what it is to be skinhead. Overall a decent movie, if not a bit two dimensional.