Matt

A pleasant surprise! It was better than I initially expected, in more ways than one. Although I found the pacing to be a bit slow at times, the story presented interesting themes - similar to Hara Kiri. With that, I'm pretty sure Hara Kiri did actually serve as inspiration for this movie. Another similarity I found was to legendary Kensei Musashi Miyamoto, as the main character very much seemed to resemble him, certainly in fighting style. Speaking of the fighting, the choreography was phenomenal. Those scenes were so beautifully constructed and geniusely thought out, with again definetely inspiration from other films like Hara Kiri, but they still are amazing in their own way.

As This Is England is by far my favourite film, I wanted to take a look at Meadows' other works as well. You can definetely see the ideas for This Is England return in this one, with many similar themes being present. Dead Man's Shoes is more violent, and to me seemed like an early version of This is England. For one the Falkland war is something briefly pointed at in both stories (In This Is England it is a bigger plot point than in this film), and the point of having a group of 'friends' and their influence is also present again, though here it is explored very differently. Overall, I did expect more out of this film. I liked the main story and the sudden twist, but the build-up was quite slow at times and the camerawork felt a bit weird. In This Is England it works as you seem to be in that room or scene, however here I think a different approach could have made certain scenes more tense. Still a 3.5/5 for me as I think the story and the ending do make up for its flaws, thus it still makes for an interesting watch.