Nineteen years since its original release, Shane Meadows’ startling fourth feature has lost none of its power. Paddy Considine is compelling as Richard, a haunted ex-soldier who returns to the place he grew up. Disaffected, lost and troubled by the past, he is a powder-keg of untrammelled male rage and an as yet unrealised threat to a group of men whose past is entwined with his.
Dead Man’s Shoes is part of the BFI’s Acting Hard season, which explores representations of working-class masculinity in British cinema from the Thatcher era to the present day.
