This Is England

This semi-autobiographical film by Shane Meadows might be pitched as The 400 Blows meets American History X, set in Midlands England during 1983, in the reign of Queen Maggie and her splendid little war in the Falklands. One of the casualties of that war was the father of Shaun, a pugnacious and sexually-precocious 12-year-old outcast, who finds a surrogate family in a surprisingly sweet band of skinhead brothers and sisters. Things start to sour after an older leader of the group gets out of prison after three years, and through xenophobic rants and violent demonstrations tries to turn the group into neo-Nazis. Shane/Shaun is embodied by superb newcomer Thomas Turgoose, while Stephen Graham is scarily intense as the disastrous father-substitute, who points to his own tattooed face and insists, “This is England.” The film has a finely honed sense of time and place (and sound), and is unpredictable yet true-seeming in its twists of characterization. (2006, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-86.)