This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie starts in a bathroom with Kelly (Lorraine Stanley) bruised and battered, while young Joanne (Georgia Groome) is cowering. They scrap together enough money for a train trip from London to Brighton. They're on the run from some dangerous gangsters led by Stuart Allen (Sam Spruell). The movie flashbacks to the beginning when prostitute Kelly befriends 12 year old runaway Joanne. Kelly's pimp Derek (Johnny Harris) tries to turn her.This is a gritty little indie from newcomer writer/director Paul Andrew Williams. The performance are all solid. The two leads are amazing. The movie does the bottom dwelling grim pretty well. There are some slower spots in the movie. But the great performances and the harrowing story are building to a really good dark ending. A minor complaint is that it doesn't go through with it. Instead it has a happy ending which is probably more sellable.

This has a street-wise and gritty feel to it (i.e. no glamour prostitutes in luscious locations). After being forced by her pimp, a prostitute lures a young homeless girl to perform for a client. Things go awry and they are forced to flee. They are then pursued by the pimps plus their clients. It all leads to a forceful conclusion.The pace is frantic throughout as we move from seedy London surroundings to Brighton on the coast of England. The language is colloquial and gives added depth (I had the sub-titles on). Lorraine Stanley (the prostitute) and Georgia Groome (the homeless girl) provide a tough texture for this film.

Let me start by saying that for the first 95% or so, I loved this movie. Gritty, fast-paced and the Joanne role was astonishingly well acted. But there is absolutely nothing that annoys me more than a good, realistic film with a joke ending like that. Why would the pedo's son go to all the trouble of terrifying and traumatizing the girl far more than his father likely did? If the kid didn't need years of therapy from being tied to a bed, she sure as hell did after being chased all over England, dragged to what she thought was her grave then seeing two people get their heads blown off. What was the point of that? Secondly, why was Kelly given a moral free pass from the director? She sure played a significant role in the kid being tied up by a pedophile. Take the scene where she's waiting while Joanne is upstairs. She only goes to help when she hears screaming. So what, it would have been OK if the pedo had just gone about the business of destroying a child quietly? Why wasn't she shot with the two thugs? I have no patience for the "she was a victim too and had no choice" argument. When confronted with destroying a child she had all kinds of choices- run away, take the beating from her pimp etc. Finally, this film strives to be realistic. Well, sorry to say it but in real-life Kelly and Joanne end up in an unmarked grave with bullets in the back of their heads. In real life, Kelly would be an addict willing to give up her kid sister, never mind some kid she's never met. It sucks but it's true and this would have been a more meaningful, more honest film with that ending rather than the laughable fairy-tale tacked onto this thing.

I remember This Is England being one of the most realistic British films I had ever seen, and I felt the same satisfaction after finishing this powerful crime drama. Basically prostitute Kelly (Lorraine Stanley) with twelve-year-old newcomer Joanne (Georgia Groome) are on the run heading to from London to Brighton after doing something terrible. Originally Kelly's pimp Derek (Johnny Harris) with associate Chum (Nathan Constance) are in pursuit of them, with orders to find them by mobster Stuart Allen (Sam Spruell). As the girls hide out and the boys try to find them, we see what the girls did through a series of flashbacks. Derek needed to find a twelve-year-old girl to perform sexual acts for mobster Duncan Allen (Alexander Morton), Stuart's father, and Kelly found Joanne on the streets. After being offered a good amount of money Joanne accepts her job, she and Duncan get together, but Kelly stops them when he was attempting to rape her, and they kill him. So Derek and Chum eventually find the girls in Brighton, take them to a meeting place where Stuart is, and you'd expect him to want to kill the girls after the boys dig their graves, but actually he kills the boys, and the girls are let go. Also starring David Keeling as Charlie, Jamie Kenna as Tony, Chloe Bale as Karen and Claudie Blakley as Tracey. Young Groome is very good, Stanley is superb, and Harris is menacing, as with This Is England the performances and story is so realistic it is disturbingly good. It was nominated the BAFTA for the Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer for director Paul Andrew Williams. Very good!