Movie review
Added 2/28/2010
This was a great performance for Robert Carlyle. The typical bad boy wants things to go bact the way they were only they can't. A wonderful love story with some broken hearts all around.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Great acting enhances familiar tale
Added 9/14/2009
Yes, the accents ARE thick, and there are no English subtitles. (Dreadful oversight.) You can manage, but there were a few chunks of dialogue where I did not know what was said.
I saw A Room for Romeo Brass some years ago, and it was fun to see the same actors reappear. And the same theme. An ancient one, how evil can look alluring, but ultimately, it is destructive and dangerous. I won't rehash the plot; others have done it at length. What you see here is a slight girl who has a dull existence unable to choose it permanently because she remembers the passion of life with Jimmy, a small time hoodlum who is the father of her daughter. When Jimmy reappears, she thinks she sees a chance to re-ignite that passion. But the daughter, unblinded by the longing mom feels, sees clearly what the right choice is, and forces the adolescents disguised as adults around her to act like adults. Simple tale, not, as the blurb here says, disturbed by the thug subplot, but enhanced by the light comedy they supply, while never letting their menacing evil be overlooked. They aren't killers, but they are bad men, and we never forget that.
Shane Meadows meshes these two tales perfectly, and creates a sober look at a pile of weak, selfish adults who are unable or unwilling to protect the child they have created. We all know women like Shirley, who often sacrifice their children to violent and abusive men, because the love they seek cannot be provided by a normal man. We all know men like Jimmy, who act as if everything exists to satisfy their whims and desires.
Oh, if there were only more Marlenes! What a great performance. It is hard not to believe that everyone involved in the production of this film knows a little too closely how divorce, selfishness, and abandonment damages families. Nicely done.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
A major disappointment
Added 10/15/2006
From the days when it was a legal requirement to cast either Robert Carlyle or Rhys Ifans if you wanted to get lottery funding for a British film, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands is another in Shane Meadows' line of deeply disappointing films before he finally came into his own with Dead Man's Shoes. To be fair, the project went through major development Hell, and the results are all too obvious in the sketchy construction and characterization. Carlyle's bad boy spurred into winning back his wife Shirley Henderson (sporting the most irritating little girly voice in history) from nice guy Ifans after seeing her on a daytime TV show is never really developed or even properly introduced, and the plot, such as it is, doesn't get going until the movie is half over. The tone is awkward, with Carlyle opting for convincingly unpleasant naturalism while Ifans lapses too often into sitcom acting, leaving the acting honors to go to Kathie Burke. There are a couple of excellent moments at a park bandstand and a final confrontation that hint at a better film that could have been, but it's all too easy to share Meadows' own disappointment with the film as a whole.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Middle-of-the-road UK love triangle
Added 4/17/2005
Superb acting is squandered in a lackluster and uninspiring hybred of comedy, romance, and thriller that tries too hard on all fronts and falls flat.
2 out of 4 people found this helpful.
|
average love story
Added 3/15/2005
Robert Carlyle is brilliant in this kind of role-violent, shiftless, abusive guy who somehow lulls those closest to him into a certain blindness and obeisance to his brutality. He reappears on the scene in his ex-girlfriend's life when he sees quiet, mild-mannered Dek (Rhys Ifans) proposing to Shirley on a tv talk show. When she refuses the proposal, Jimmy (Carlyle) sees it as his grand opportunity to claim the one who got away. Shirley is portrayed by Shirley Henderson, who seems to pop up in small, unusual but often pivotal roles (24 Hour Party People, for example). When Jimmy resurfaces, Dek cowers, backs down, not fighting for the woman he loves, much to the disappointment of Shirley's precocious child, who considers Dek her father.
Eventually Dek finds his nerve and sends Jimmy packing, but only once he hits rock bottom and decided to take what's rightfully his-not by resorting to stupidity but by using his love, sensitivity and stability.
3 out of 4 people found this helpful.
|
Movie review
Added 2/28/2010
This was a great performance for Robert Carlyle. The typical bad boy wants things to go bact the way they were only they can't. A wonderful love story with some broken hearts all around.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Great acting enhances familiar tale
Added 9/14/2009
Yes, the accents ARE thick, and there are no English subtitles. (Dreadful oversight.) You can manage, but there were a few chunks of dialogue where I did not know what was said.
I saw A Room for Romeo Brass some years ago, and it was fun to see the same actors reappear. And the same theme. An ancient one, how evil can look alluring, but ultimately, it is destructive and dangerous. I won't rehash the plot; others have done it at length. What you see here is a slight girl who has a dull existence unable to choose it permanently because she remembers the passion of life with Jimmy, a small time hoodlum who is the father of her daughter. When Jimmy reappears, she thinks she sees a chance to re-ignite that passion. But the daughter, unblinded by the longing mom feels, sees clearly what the right choice is, and forces the adolescents disguised as adults around her to act like adults. Simple tale, not, as the blurb here says, disturbed by the thug subplot, but enhanced by the light comedy they supply, while never letting their menacing evil be overlooked. They aren't killers, but they are bad men, and we never forget that.
Shane Meadows meshes these two tales perfectly, and creates a sober look at a pile of weak, selfish adults who are unable or unwilling to protect the child they have created. We all know women like Shirley, who often sacrifice their children to violent and abusive men, because the love they seek cannot be provided by a normal man. We all know men like Jimmy, who act as if everything exists to satisfy their whims and desires.
Oh, if there were only more Marlenes! What a great performance. It is hard not to believe that everyone involved in the production of this film knows a little too closely how divorce, selfishness, and abandonment damages families. Nicely done.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
A major disappointment
Added 10/15/2006
From the days when it was a legal requirement to cast either Robert Carlyle or Rhys Ifans if you wanted to get lottery funding for a British film, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands is another in Shane Meadows' line of deeply disappointing films before he finally came into his own with Dead Man's Shoes. To be fair, the project went through major development Hell, and the results are all too obvious in the sketchy construction and characterization. Carlyle's bad boy spurred into winning back his wife Shirley Henderson (sporting the most irritating little girly voice in history) from nice guy Ifans after seeing her on a daytime TV show is never really developed or even properly introduced, and the plot, such as it is, doesn't get going until the movie is half over. The tone is awkward, with Carlyle opting for convincingly unpleasant naturalism while Ifans lapses too often into sitcom acting, leaving the acting honors to go to Kathie Burke. There are a couple of excellent moments at a park bandstand and a final confrontation that hint at a better film that could have been, but it's all too easy to share Meadows' own disappointment with the film as a whole.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
