If you do not like dark, challenging films, don't bother.
If you are ready for something unlike anything you've ever seen, and are not afraid to confront difficult emotions, give this film a go, you won't be disappointed.
From the start the tone is set. A bleak town in Northern England, like many bleak towns in northern England. With petty, small time drug dealers, like petty small time drug dealers everywhere, vicious and stupid. Then into their lives comes a mysterious figure, in a green parka. And nothing will ever be the same.
It's difficult to describe the movie without spoilers, and I do not want to spoil a single second of what is possibly the most powerful and emotionally wrenching film I have seen for a decade and more (made all the more powerful by the haunting music). Paddy Considine (who wrote and stars in the film) is stunning as, for want of a better phrase, an avenging angel, albeit a fallen one. The menace and tension builds and builds (including perhaps the best depiction of a bad LSD trip ever set down on film - it's an extremely discomforting experience if you've ever been on the wrong end of a bad trip, believe me) until the harrowing climax. This is not a nice film. This is not a fun film. This is, however, an exceptional film, and perhaps more importantly it is an honest film, a true film if such a thing can be said of fiction.
If you want smiles, or empty action, or to put your brain on hold, this is not the film for you.
If, however, you want a film with genuine emotional depth, that makes you think and resonates far after the end credits have finished, then this may be what you're looking for.
Just don't expect an easy ride.
An overused word, but the closest I've seen to a masterpiece for many a long year.
