This Is England

This is England could have ended there, as a kind of prequel to A Clockwork Orange, but Meadows isn't content with telling a simple cautionary tale. Instead, he takes the movie through a predictable crisis to an unconvincing redemption and a final montage that sketches an insufficiently explored turnaround. With a symbolic gesture set to a plaintive Smiths tune, Shaun renounces his nationalist leanings, and whatever rang true about him is sublimated entirely into the stuff of movies. That's not England, that's pure Hollywood