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Average User Score: 7 (7 sources)

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BoredMark

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This was one of the better indie films I've seen in a while.

I liked the story a lot but it fell dead every now and then. It always managed to pick back up again but didn't ever manage to hold suspense or a climax.

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This was one of the better indie films I've seen in a while.

I liked the story a lot but it fell dead every now and then. It always managed to pick back up again but didn't ever manage to hold suspense or a climax.

Regardless - I enjoyed it more than any other indie film I've seen in the last year.

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Posted may 5, 2008 9:58 pm pt

digi_matrix

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Wow. What a unique movie. Dead Man's Shoes. Wow. What a unique movie. In terms of revenge movies, I can see this being one of the best. It's certainly the most realistic, most powerful, and shocking. After 30 minutes of this, I was thinking,...
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Wow. What a unique movie. Dead Man's Shoes. Wow. What a unique movie. In terms of revenge movies, I can see this being one of the best. It's certainly the most realistic, most powerful, and shocking. After 30 minutes of this, I was thinking, "what am I actually watching?" Something between a gangster film and a documentary. The cinematography is bewildering, because it's not stylish, and maintains a degree of reality. It's not stylish camera angles, or all about guns and glorification of violence. There's a major payoff at the end, and you'll be surprised by the plot twist.

Paddy Considine's performance here is just groundbreaking. Certainly, one of the most under-rated actors in Britain. He deserves more credit. I could stare at his short, finely trimmed hair and beard, green overalls, and his mysterious face for days. It's all in the eyes. The gangsters give also very realistic roles, just normal yobs having fun and Sonny taking things too far.

What I don't understand is with critics not liking this. Maybe critics will never understand movies like this. It must've been a very personal project for Paddy Considine since it's dedicated to Martin Joseph Considine (not sure if that is his late father or his son) and that he has 2 of his family members in the film. This is essential viewing for anyone who loves British movies that are slightly 'out there'. It's a moody, brilliant film that might move you in the process.

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Posted mar 29, 2007 6:31 am pt

• [+] The Onion (A.V. Club)
  
  83
  For all Dead Man's Shoes' well-paced, well-observed boondocks melodrama, its premise seems simultaneously slender and overheated.

  by Noel Murray | Read Full Review »
• [+] Film Threat
  
  80
  An original, complex, and utterly gruesome revenge parable, and never portrays its characters as black and white. Considine handles his performance like a pro, and only adds to the pure skill behind it.

  by Felix Vasques Jr. | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Daily News
  
  75
  This is no simplistic vigilante movie. Like Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance" trilogy, it explores the nature of the beast of revenge, leaving the audience in a sweat of dread.

  by Jami Bernard | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  70
  The always fantastic Paddy Considine evokes both sensitivity and explosiveness.

  by Laura Kern | Read Full Review »
• [+] Portland Oregonian
  
  67
  Meadows loses control as he goes along, veering into assorted noodling and sacrificing the knife's-edge clarity of the early going for something arty and artificial.

  by Shawn Levy | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Post
  
  63
  Very slowly builds to a powerful climax for this arty cross between "Straw Dogs" and "First Blood."

  by Lou Lumenick | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  63
  Though the story is formulaic, the bleakly naturalistic performances give it an uncomfortable sting.

  by Maitland McDonagh | Read Full Review »
• [+] Entertainment Weekly
  
  50
  The imagery is exotically grungy and jumbled by flashback, but in the end, the picture's more pulp than juice.

  by Lisa Schwarzbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Hollywood Reporter
  
  40
  The film is filled with deeply unpleasant and stupid people whose vapid speech is largely incomprehensible due to thick regional accents.

  by Ray Bennett | Read Full Review »
• [+] Variety
  
  40
  Film plays as a quirky Brit riff on everything from U.S. slasher pics to revenge oaters but without Meadows' usual psychological complexity.

  by Derek Elley | Read Full Review »
• [+] Village Voice
  
  40
  Dead Man's Shoes is all about revenge, but in trying to be one of those serious revenge films that questions violence while indulging in it, it manages to keep virtually all the characters unsympathetic and uninteresting.

  by Luke Y. Thompson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  30
  A shocking revelation near the end explains the soldier's nihilistic rage but simultaneously tears a gigantic hole in the plot, leaving little to admire but Considine's typically penetrating performance.

  by J.R. Jones | Read Full Review »
• [+] LA Weekly
  
  30
  Like so many movies of its kind, Dead Man's Shoes gets hopelessly lost in vicious process, and so loses all sight of anything you might optimistically call insight.

  by Ella Taylor | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  25
  There are flashes of grim humor interspersed with the murders, but not enough wit to elevate this movie beyond its primary identity: grisly revenge fantasy.

  by Jessica Reaves | Read Full Review »