Review of Dead Man's Shoes (2004) by Mjs M — 06 Jan 2010

I can?t say I was looking forward to watching this, I have issues with movies about revenge and the DVD displays every indication of this being yet another violent English Tarentino rip-off crime movie.

To the film?s credit, the movie isn?t really a Tarentino ripoff along the lines of a Guy Richie movie, but it does have pretty much everything I don?t like about revenge movies. The film is basically about a guy who plans to methodically murder a handful of people who abused his retarded brother while he was in the army? that?s it, there?s really no twist or much of anything more complicated than dude kills assholes for 90 minutes, it?s basically a glorified slasher movie.

This isn?t helped by the fact that the movie doesn?t do a whole lot to make me want to see the victims here die, what they did to get in this position wasn?t cool, but it also didn?t exactly seem like the kind of thing to spur on a killing spree, and the kills weren?t all that effective or entertaining either.

To the film?s credit: Paddy Considine gives a pretty good performance, and the English countryside works well as a setting and is filmed effectively by Shane Meadows, who would go on to make the infinitely better This is England.

Otherwise this is a pretty stupid movie.