In the present, he's a weak-minded bumbler, but in the past, he's a thug and an ogre. His aimless viciousness in the flashback scenes is so calculated (at one point, he brings up the specter of homosexual rape, if for no other reason than it's required of all British crime dramas to allude to it as a humbling of manliness) that it seems borne of desperation.
Desperation, too, informs the portrayal of Anthony as mentally retarded. There isn't any good reason for Anthony to be thus handicapped, save for the sympathy it generates. I give them credit for a last-minute attempt to undermine said auto-sympathy, but by then it's moot. Taking these kinds of shortcuts makes you wonder how truly confident Meadows and Considine (the latter of whom also co-wrote the screenplay) were in their material.
There's a lot that's worthwhile about Dead Man's Shoes. Considine brings some surprising shades to his one-track character. I like the way his relationship with Anthony is handled; the nature of it is obvious from the start, but it reinforces the idea that Richard isn't doing much more than chasing phantoms.
A lot of the downtime scenes between the villains are amusing in a low-key way. And the final confrontation, where Richard sees his self-vindicating mindset blown to hell ("You were supposed to be a monster"), makes the film's point stick like a needle in the brain. (I'll excuse the portentous choral soundtrack that pops up at this point.)
Alas, one has to comfortably inhabit a genre before one can subvert it; in attempting to undermine the tenets of the revenge drama, Meadows instead undermines himself.
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Article comments
1 - peter walsh
For me, it's Ahab mate. Richard is smashing though the paper masks, looking for a deeper core to strike at with his vengeance. The religious motifs and themes of the film are tangled and deep-running. The killings are predestined, and cannot be prevented. That, I reckon, is why Sonny doesn't reload his gun. He knows he can't stop Richard. Ignore the banal backdrop, the grubbiness of the town and its lowlife. This is heaven and hell, with all the rhythms of the universe pumping through it.
2 - simon l
To question why Anthony is handicapped, and why Sonny does not reload his gun brings to the surface that maybe you just did not understand the film.
Sonny was the big I am, all front, he was scared and in shock, that is why he sat back down in his seat holding the rifle, the treatment of a young handicapped boy let alone his brother shows us the justification for such brutality. ten out of ten.