Distributor:
Columbia Pictures
(Region 4) Director: Shane Meadows Cast ROBERT CARLYLE / RHYS IFANS / KATHY BURKE / SHIRLEY
HENDERSON / RICKY TOMLINSON Extras: No Easter Eggs: No Certificate: M15+
With it’s punning title and it’s Morriconesque music
Shane Meadows gorgeously funny
Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
does at times play out like a
revengist Spaghetti Western but
set of course in deepest darkest
Nottingham.
Robert Carlyle heads the cast as hardnut petty
crook Jimmy who, after seeing
his ex-girlfriend Shirley
(Shirley Henderson) and his
daughter Donna (Young Finn
Atkins displays great talent
here) on a morning TV discussion
show (hosted by a slimmed down
Vanessa Feltz), and decides to
head back home to reclaim her,
much to the distress of
Shirl’s new boyfriend Dec (Rhys
Ifans). Jimmy though also has a
hidden agenda for coming back,
he is on the run for a robbery
(having cheated the rest of his
gang and scarpered with the
loot).
As always Meadows has a superb ear for the real, fantastic
dialogue (with more bad language than you can shake a stick at though),
naturally played out by the first rate cast, by turns funny and sad in
equal measure. Kathy Burke is her usual quality self as Jimmy’s foster
sister and there is a great turn from Ricky Tomlinson as Burke’s
country and western obsessed estranged husband. Carlyle and Ifans in
vastly differing roles are equally good. Only Shirley Henderson
naturally Scottish but here playing with a sometimes wavering Midlands accent is somewhat flat.
Once Upon a Time in The Midlands, despite containing
moments of extreme hilarity does have an underlying sadness that elevates it
from being a good British movie to being a great British movie. John
Lunn’s soundtrack is fantastic too.
No extras just a trio of trailers (Anita and Me, Swimming
Upstream and I Capture the Castle)
