It's 1983 and school is out. Twelve-year-old Shaun is a lonely boy, whose father died fighting in the Falklands War. Over the course of the summer holiday he befriends a group of local skinheads. Friends soon become like family, and relationships will be pushed to the very limit.
Its tough but moving neo-realist approach make it one of the better British films of recent times.
KPBS.org
November 15, 2007
Meadows obviously knows the working class neighborhoods that he depicts. There's a grit and honesty to his film as he chronicles the mundane details of these kids' lives.
Reverse Shot
August 08, 2009
It is the war within him--and by extension, within the minds of many embittered, working class young men left behind in Thatcher's England--that Meadows's film most strikingly portrays.
You wouldn't think a film about a group of British skinheads during the early 1980s could be a sweet, nostalgic coming-of-age period piece, but that's the surprise of the authentic, fresh and utterly relevant This Is England.
Steeped in the raw mix of ska and punk sound as expression of the youth alienation and misguided rage of those tumultuous times, an alarming voice of the surging army of jobless youth back then dubbed 'no hopers.'
How sad and predictable is the fate of those who counsel violence as a means to an end. And yet how poignant it all seems when viewed through Shane Meadows' thoughtful lens.