Gone Baby Gone

Last night I was watching a film on television called This is England, written and directed by Shane Meadows. The film is set in July 1983, where twelve year old Shaun Fields (Thomas Turgoose) lives on a tough housing estate with his mother, his father having been killed in the Falklands war, and suffers constant bullying. One day he befriends a friendly gang of skinheads led by the affable Woody (Joe Gilgun), who soon become almost like a second family. It's all fun and games until the brutal, militant, racist Combo (Stephen Graham) reappears after spending three years in prison and the gang splits in two, and Shaun finds himself in much more uncomfortable territiory. The film is largely autobiographical, based on Meadows' own childhood experiences (note the names: Shane Meadows = Shaun Fields). The film is shot in an almost documentary style, with context provided by plentiful archive footage of the early 1980s. The film is frequently brutal and harsh, but there is also a lot of humour and genuine compassion. I remember seeing Meadows at the Film Festival about four years ago where he was discussing short film-making and showing some of his own short films. Apparently he used to make a short film more or less every week on his video camera with his friend, actor Paddy Considine, and most of the films are just five or ten minutes of Considine in a costume delivering a monologue in character, and sometimes the short films spawned his features.

It was another very dull day at work, as usual. After work I went along to the Ocean Terminal shopping centre with my mum. We had a coffee at Costa Coffee and then went up to the cinema in the mall to see a preview of Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck, and based on a novel by Dennis Lehane. When a young girl is abducted in a closely knit Boston neighbourhood, private investigator Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his partner and girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan) are hired to assist in the investigation because of their contacts in the neighbourhood. As their investigation progresses, Kenzie and Angie are drawn into an increasingly dark and brutal world. The film, which also stars Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, is a very bleak and complex thriller. I thought it was really good.

After the film, Dad picked us up and we went to Pizza Express for something to eat. I had a Four Seasons pizza, which was really nice, and a chocolate ice-cream dessert.