Must-have movies: Dead Man's Shoes (2004)
Marc Lee reviews a classic that every film-lover will want to own

As a filmmaker, Shane Meadows is as rooted in his home territory as, say, Woody Allen is in New York or M Night Shyamalan in Philadelphia. And if Matlock, Derbyshire doesn't seem quite as promising or exotic a setting, his extraordinarily powerful and coolly lyrical Dead Man's Shoes places it on the cinematic map as firmly as the Big Apple or the City of Brotherly Love. It's a tale that takes frequent ugly turns, but the views are beautiful throughout.

Meadows's fourth full-length feature was shot in just three weeks on a low budget; key casting decisions were made only days before filming got underway; and the script was in a constant state of flux. Yet it is as confident and satisfying a movie as this country has produced this century.

In addition to the accomplished cinematography, which also weaves in unnervingly fidgety hand-held sequences, Dead Man's Shoes shines with a narrative that bowls along through terrible revelation and appalling violence to a devastating denouement. There is also a twist as effective as Shyamalan's best.

However, the film is unmissable mainly because of a towering central performance from Britain's best actor.

Paddy Considine, who co-wrote the script with Meadows, plays Richard, a former soldier who returns home to wreak revenge on a bunch of local low-lifes – drug abusers, petty criminals – who, eight years earlier, tormented his younger brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell, superb). He terrorises the gang in a similar manner, gradually turning these tough nuts into gibbering bundles of nerves who, in the end, are afraid even to visit the lavatory alone.

Considine brings an astonishing intensity to the role, blending quiet malevolence with fraternal gentleness. Even if he is motivated partly by guilt at having failed Anthony, his righteousness makes him utterly invincible.

There is a leavening of humour – Richard dons a gas mask to transform himself into a nightmarish "elephant man" and later plasters the gang leader's face with clownish make-up while he sleeps – but Dead Man's Shoes, with its bursts of highly imaginative nastiness and brutality, is not for the faint-hearted.

"I've been torpedoed!"
Askey replies..
"Well I didn't do it!"