For director Shane Meadows and actors Paddy Considine and Toby Kebbell their film Dead Man’s Shoes was something of a turning point in each of their careers. Initially from an idea that Meadows and Considine had been developing the film’s vigilante our for revenge evolved and became a film about a disaffected soldier who returns to his hometown to get even with the thugs who brutalized his mentally-challenged brother years ago.
Waking in Dead Man’s Shoes…..
The loosest of scripts saw the actors improvise around each scene to often brilliant effect. Considine had worked with Meadows on his 1999 film ‘A Room for Romeo Brass’ and here would star as Richard the soldier kitted out in a green military style jacket and frequenting the haunts where the gang who his younger autistic brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) had hung around with. Kebbell had come on board very late in the day when the original actor had dropped out concerned about portraying a man with a disability but Kebbell took on the role with aplomb in what was only his second feature after a small role in TV series ‘Peak Practice. Both performances are terrific for very different reasons Considine’s vigilante soldier was chilling, barely containing the fury and violence that simmered that threatened to explode at any moment. Kebbell’s performance as an autistic man was sympathetic and at times upsetting and so convincing that for several years afterwards when he was called in by casting agents they were astounded that he didn’t suffer from the disability that he had portrayed on screen.
If you count Meadows 1996 sixty minute film ‘Small Time’ as his first feature then Dead Man’s Shoes was his fifth feature film along with a whole host of short films many of which he had made with Considine having been in college together. Though the film is a revenge drama it’s instigated by a single moment where Kebell’s character Anthony walks past a house at the wrong time just as one of the protagonists is drawing the curtains and leans out of the window to ask him a favour and from thereon Anthony’s fate is sealed. It is a coincidence but then Meadows rightly argues that so many things occur in our lives by accident rather than design and this finds Anthony at the mercy of an utterly despicable group of drugged up losers.
Acclaim…
Dead Man’s Shoes premiered at the 2024 Edinburgh Film Festival and adulation for the film was immediate with Meadows and his producer Mark Herbert nominated for a BAFTA for Best British Film and then further nominated for 8 Brtish Independent Film Awards though sadly won none although Meadows did win an award from the Director’s Guild of Great Britain for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in British Film. After his previous though acclaimed films that commercially made no money Dead Man’s Shoes did albeit not much. butt gave Meadows the kudos that he deserved and he would go on to make the remarkable and often disturbing TV series, ‘This is England’.
Those bonus features….
Arriving on Limited Edition Blu-ray the disc has an array of excellent bonus features from the masters of reissues Second Sight and includes:
Special Features
- New audio commentary with director Shane Meadows and producer Mark Herbert
- New audio commentary by Andrew Graves and Jon Towlson
- Audio commentary with Shane Meadows, actor Paddy Considine and Mark Herbert
- Quite a Journey: a new interview with Shane Meadows and Mark Herbert
- A Very Fine Line: a new interview with actor Toby Kebbell
- The Right Horses: a new interview with actor Gary Stretch
- Made an Impact: an interview with director of photography Danny Cohen
- Deleted and Alternate Scenes
- In Shane’s Shoes
- Short Film: Northern Soul
- Danger Mouse and Jemini Music Video
Limited Edition Contents
- Rigid slipcase with new artwork by Krishna Shenoi
- 120-page book with new essays by Anna Cale, Tim Coleman, Matt Glasby, Joel Harley, Ella Kemp and Hannah Strong
- Dead Man’s Shoes Graphic Novel
- Six collectors’ art cards
The stand out features are the audio commentary with Meadows, Considine and producer Mark Herbert as well as the interview with Toby Kebbell and the stand alone chat with Meadows and Herbert which are both insightful into how the film came to be and the issues they had making a low budget film in four week window that Considine had before he started shooting another shoot. .
Dead Man’s Shoes is an outstanding British film that is far smarter, grittier and effective than some Brit ‘Death Wish’ imitation that it might be mistaken for. It established Meadows as a director to watch and for both Considine and Kebell especially as two adept and skilled talents that make this limited edition blu-ray an essential buy.
related feature : Toby Kebbell chats to us about working with Shia Labeouf on boxing drama, ‘Salvable’..
related feature : We take a look at the 2016 remake of the classic epic, ‘Ben Hur’ starring Toby Kebbell
Here’s the trailer…..
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