What an over rated film.....kid is bullied, kid hangs out with nicest skinheads in the world (all a bit odd ... 11yr old with 17 year olds???)....nasty skinhead turns up and beats up fat weed dealing skinhead....11 year old is sad.

Was there any point to the film other than suggest anyone who waves a St George's Cross is a neonazi?

 

I think you need to look a little deeper than that. To me it was more of a social commentary paralleling the racism of the skinheads/NF against the Falklands war and the country's attitude towards the 'Argies' as whipped up by the media and government of the time.

Not an easy watch, but some good performances and it certainly took me back to the time of the Falklands. I am glad I saw it anyway. Each to their own though.

 

Great film. You're clearly lacking in any form of understanding a story and looking into what makes the characters tick.

 

Well i thought it was pretty good

 

Maybe that was my problem...i was expecting something that wasnt an easy watch - yet my only issue was sod all happened. Coupled with the whole "11 year old friends with teenagers" thing i just didnt get it.

Must be a southern thing...i was 11 in the early 80's and all i wanted was a filofax and a 911 - not a ben sherman shirt and a crew cut!

 

I understood the story (what there was of it) and i knew why the ticked - i just didnt care.

 

Isn't a scoobynet member in this

 

Yep he plays the black kid who gets ....................

cant remember his username now

 

whitepower ?

Its a joke... Joke joke joke joke

 

Thanks for totally spoiling that Carl!

 

Shimmy Type-R or some variation on that.

 

Andrew Shimm was the actor.


Anyway - anyone wanting some 80's retro and a bit of "racism is nasty" is better off renting The Wedding Singer and American History X.

 

Pfft! you speak for yourself! I was 11 in the early 80's and I wanted (and had) a crew cut, braces, DMs the works. And I was in London.

Must have been a certain kind of southerner - Bet you lived in the sticks

 

Non sheep ones?

 

Oops sorry

 

Possibly. I mean filofaxes were rare as rocking horse ****e in the 80's

 

And Shimy Typer R on Scoobynet

I really enjoyed the film, I was 13/14 when the film was set, last thing I wanted was a filofax or a 911, never wanted to be one of them yuppies

 

It was strange it was sort of like watching a violent version of grange hill !!! Personally i thought it was a load of complete ****e!!

 

i was 17/18 in the early eighties and didnt want either - mus have been where it all went wrong

 

One of the best british films in recent times tbh along with dead mans shoes by the same director

 

I though it was a good film, too. Posted a thread about it a few weeks back.

 

I enjoyed it , but after reading some rave reviews I did expect it to be a bit better honestly .

As for the early 80's I can remember wanting Michaela Strachan pretty badly lol

Oh and a calculator watch

 

Never mind. Id already suspected it after a post by another member.....

 

so you were a posh sod, then.. in the late (read V.late) 70's and into the early eighties I was happy to be seen in a Ben Sherman Shirt and there was a lot of truth in the film.

 

Lots of truth in the film there were loads of hardcore skins knocking around with 10 year old kids back in the day !!!

 

posh? well i didnt wear doc martins, braces, shave my head and want to beat up pakis......if that makes me posh fine.

 

Film is based on the directors chilhood, Heres what he said about it -

Set in 1983, this is the first period film I have made. A great deal of it is based on my own childhood and I tried to recreate my memoirs of being an 11-year-old kid trying to fit in. It was a time when Uttoxeter, like the rest of the country, was awash with endless different youth tribes. There were new romantics, heavy rockers, smoothies, punks, goths, skins and mod revivalists who were into the Specials and 2 Tone. Then there were those pop culture kids who came into school wearing one green sock, one pink sock and some deely boppers on their head. People often looked daft, but were genuinely committed to their chosen denomination and would wear their identities on their sleeves with immense pride. In a town as small as Uttoxeter, though, there weren't enough people for each sub culture to fill their own parties or clubs, so most weekends everyone would turn up at the same village hall disco and end up fighting.

Like most 11-year-old kids who wore jumpers with animals on, I got bullied by the older kids at school. So I looked for my own tribe to join. It was the skinhead movement that enamoured me the most. I remember seeing 10 or 15 of them at the bus shelter on my way home from school one summer night and thinking they were the most fearsome thing I had ever seen. Even though I was terrified of them, I was instantly attracted to them. To be a part of most of the other factions you had to be a little rich kid. But to be a skinhead, all you needed was a pair of jeans, some work boots, a white shirt and a shaved head. You could be transformed from a twerp into a fearsome warrior in 15 minutes. Skins appealed to me because they were like soldiers: they wore their outfits like suits of armour and demanded respect. There were playground myths that surrounded them and especially their Dr Martens boots. It was feared that a single kick from a DM boot would kill you or at the very least give you brain damage. I can remember kids refusing to fight unless the skinhead agreed to remove his fearsome boots first.

My older sister was going out with a skinhead who took me under his wing and taught me about the roots of the whole culture. He was a nice bloke who bore no relation to the stereotypical racist yob that people now associate with that time. It was him that I based the character of Woody on in the film. I learned from him that skinheads had grown out of working class English lads working side by side with west Indians in factories and shipyards in the late-60s. The black lads would take the whites to blues parties where they were exposed to ska music for the first time. Soon, Jamaican artists like Desmond Dekker, the Upsetters and Toots And The Maytals were making a living out of songs aimed directly at English white kids. This was where the whole skinhead thing came from - it was inherently multicultural. But nowadays when I tell people that I used to be a skinhead, they think I'm saying I used to be racist. My film shows how rightwing politics started to creep into skinhead culture in the 1980s and change people's perception of it. This was a time when there were three and a half million people unemployed and we were involved in a pointless war in the Falklands. When people are frustrated and disillusioned that's when you get extremist groups moving in and trying to exploit the situation. That's what the National Front did in the early-80s. Skinheads had always taken pride in being working class and English so they were easy targets for the NF who said that their identities were under threat. They cultivated a real hatred of the Asian community. In the film, Combo represents the sort of charismatic leader the NF used to turn skinheads into violent street enforcers. Suddenly, all skinheads were branded the same way. But most of the real old skins who were into the music and the clothes went on to be scooter boys to separate themselves from the racism. I always wanted This Is England to tell the truth about skinheads.

 

Thanks for posting that, pretty much how I remember things at that time too.

 

Sounds like theres an interesting film to be made about that issue....pitty no ones done it yet!

 

I was 11 in 1983 and remember with great fondness Madness, Bad manners, two tone etc...
I moved on through electro, hip hop, reggae, dub, ska then back to Bad Manners and Madness among others.

My uncle who is 9 years older than me was proper skin. Red Martens, (14 Holer), bleached jeans green bomber. He got me into two tone. In school we wore black Martens, and naturally the more holes they had the more respect you got. None of us were racist. I doubt I even knew the meaning of the word back then.

During my early 20's I dressed semi skin from time to time. although my head was bald, My bomber was black and orange, I wore combat fatigues and white Nike air Max (I know I know, I shake my head myself).

One evening walking through Uxbridge A black guy spat at me. I presume because he thought I was a racist. He couldn't have been further from the truth. I stopped dressing like it after that.

Live and learn.