Paddy Considine’s Richard is like a male version of Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill. He’s a self-styled exterminating angel, a war veteran returning to avenge the abuse his mentally challenged brother Anthony suffered at the hands of a group of local drug runners in a small British town. In dramatic fashion, Richard menaces and picks off his targets one by one, owing many of his murderous techniques to horror films. Wearing a gas mask, he stalks his victims, suddenly appearing outside doors and windows, and we view his retribution from his point of view (very Friday the 13th). Throughout the film, we see washed out flashbacks to Anthony’s abuse. The perpetrators are mostly seemingly harmless louts who enjoy a bit of drugs and porn, and Meadows shows us how the weak and directionless in an impoverished community often prey upon the weakest of them all. Unlike in a Tarantino film, there is very little pleasure to be taken from Richard’s bloody murders. Meadows lacks the genre-defying artfulness of a DePalma or a Peckinpah, yet Dead Man’s Shoes at least delivers an extremely credible portrayal of a town that time forgot.
Opens May 12 at Cinema Village
Opens May 12 at Cinema Village
