This is England
Shane Meadows | UK | 2007
101 min

Yet another British movie dealing with young, British people, and making English people seem like the sort of people whom I don’t want to have any contacts with. I had this same feeling with two movies about English football hooligans and no amount of male bonding and close friendships portrayed in their groups will change that.

In This is England, we zip back to the 80s, and Shaun is a young 14-year old kid (I think I read somewhere he is supposed to be 14, but he looks 12, so I don’t know) who gets teased at school and is feeling lonely. But soon he gets befriended by a bunch of older skinhead kids. Although, I don’t know why a group of older teenagers wants a random 14- (or 12) year old kid to hang out with them. But this group does, and Shaun is excited, because these are nice kids, they trash an abandoned house, drink, smoke pot, and hug each other a lot and claim to be BFF.

Enter Combo. He is much older and has just come out of prison, and he is a true skinhead, the racist ones. There is a split in the previous group and some, including young Shaun, joins with Combo. These guys turn to a more violent lifestyle, bullying Pakistani kids, calling out ethnic slurs, stealing from a shop, but hey, it’s not that bad, they still hug a lot.

If This is England, then fuck England.