DEATH BECOMES HIM

REVIEWED - DEAD MAN'S SHOES: In his last film, the under-appreciated Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, Shane Meadows attempted to integrate the traditions of the western into his chosen midlands milieu of Pot Noodles, bad clothes and generic lager.

Though Dead Man's Shoes makes no explicit references to the cowboy movie, few sensible people glancing at a synopsis - a man and his brother stroll into a lawless town seeking revenge - could be in any doubt that Meadows and his co-writer and star, Paddy Considine, have a similar scheme in mind here. But the picture could not be more different to its predecessor. Whereas Once Upon a Time was Meadow's lightest film to date, Dead Man's Shoes is hugely violent, deeply sinister and stubbornly disturbing.

The picture begins with Richard, an ex-marine who has kept hold of all his biggest knives, ambling through a beautiful valley accompanied by his simple-minded brother (Toby Kebbell). After setting up camp in a ruined farmhouse, Richard makes his way to a nearby town to confront a gang of pathetically shambolic drug dealers who have, some years earlier, done something awful - exactly what is gradually revealed through flashbacks - to his unfortunate sibling.

At first Richard just plays pranks. He paints the face of the gang leader, Sonny (a fine performance by the former boxer and sometime it-guy Gary Stretch) while he is in a stupor. He lurks around wearing a gas mask and chemical weapons suit. Then, deciding the fun is over, he chops up one of their number with an axe and writes, in blood, of course, a concise warning above his now inanimate head.

Dead Man's Shoes retains the low-key humour that characterises Meadows's best work, even while moving through the darkest territory imaginable. Aside from Sonny, who is truly terrifying, the villains have little in common with the child-eating in-breds from Sam Peckinpah's not dissimilar Straw Dogs. Packed into a tiny Citroen, constantly bickering about nonsense, they could, if they were much less funny, be the heroes of the latest lottery-financed Brit-com.

The geezers are, in fact, considerably less menacing than Richard. Though he has his moments of spitting rage, Considine is most unnerving when calmly conciliatory. At one stage, after doing something truly horrible, he puts his arm round one of his weeping adversaries. "Was this for me?" he says quietly, examining a knife on a table with the embarrassed look of someone happening upon an unwrapped birthday gift. The conflict between what is said and what is felt contributes to a truly ghastly atmosphere.

Few such revenge stories end satisfactorily - once everyone culpable is dead there really is nowhere left to go. And the climax of Dean Man's Shoes feels hurried and compromised. But this remains an utterly singular piece of work.