A Room for Romeo Brass: Film # 25 of Film 365

Thursday 14th April 2011

Director: Shane Meadows
Year: 1999
Stars: Andrew Shim, Ben Marshall, Paddy Considine, Vicky McClure, Ladene Hall, Frank Harper, Julia Ford, James Higgins

Well here's a film that's the exact opposite to Limitless. It starts off slow, builds up to create tension and leaves you wandering what the hell just happened. There certainly aren't any plot holes. Overthinking this, I imagine, is the point.

Romeo Brass (Shim) and Gavin Woolley (Marshall) are mates. One day, Woolley is getting beaten up by a couple of teenagers when Romeo calls over a man (Morell, played by Considine) to help. This leads to some interesting events involving Romeo, Gavin, Morell and Romeo's sister.

For the first half or so of this, I wasn't sure I liked it. I'm still not entirely - but I think I do. Just as I was wondering what the point of the movie might be, things took a sudden turn. A fairly dramatic one, but not one that was then constantly rammed down your throat. It was all a bit too much like real life for that. The thing is, without the slow character-building in the film, the final 20 minutes wouldn't be half as rewarding as it - or make you think about them half as much.

If you want an introduction to Shane Meadows, I'd advise watching This is England (which feels like a director having learnt his craft well, and building on it to tremendous success). If you want to know where those ideas came from, then give A Room for Romeo Brass a try. Just have a bit of patience with it.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5