Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

34 10,000 B.C.
48 21
47 27 Dresses
17 88 Minutes
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
55 Baby Mama
69 Bank Job, The
52 Be Kind Rewind
42 Bucket List, The
54 Charlie Bartlett
36 College Road Trip
31 Deception
51 Doomsday
41 Drillbit Taylor
29 Fool's Gold
57 Forbidden Kingdom, The
67 Forgetting Sarah Marshall
59 Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
57 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
71 Horton Hears a Who!
63 How She Move
78 Iron Man
35 Jumper
81 Juno
56 Leatherheads
41 Mad Money
37 Made of Honor
9 Meet the Spartans
48 National Treasure: Book of Secrets
39 Never Back Down
55 Nim's Island
50 Other Boleyn Girl, The
xx Rogue
44 Ruins, The
47 Semi-Pro
76 Shine a Light
37 Shutter
57 Smart People
37 Speed Racer
62 Spiderwick Chronicles, The
50 Step Up 2 the Streets
61 Stop Loss
55 Street Kings
33 Superhero Movie
92 There Will Be Blood
45 Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
40 Vantage Point
36 What Happens in Vegas...

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83 Alexandra
43 Anamorph
35 Babysitters, The
32 Backseat
80 Band's Visit, The
62 Battle for Haditha
47 Bella
63 Blind Mountain
71 Blindsight
47 Boarding Gate
63 Body of War
58 Bra Boys
70 Caramel
54 Cashback
44 Chaos Theory
32 Chapter 27
69 Chicago 10
82 Chop Shop
46 CJ7
78 Counterfeiters, The
30 Cover
48 Dark Matter
35 Deal
61 Dhamma Brothers, The
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58 Fall, The
43 Favor, The
58 First Saturday in May, The
57 Flawless
87 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx From Within
44 Frontier(s)
59 Fugitive Pieces
41 Funny Games
66 George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61 Girls Rock!
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57 Grand, The
58 Hats Off
68 Honeydripper
xx Jack and Jill vs. the World
67 Jellyfish
xx Kiss the Bride
37 Life Before Her Eyes, The
72 Life of Reilly, The
50 Look
65 Married Life
35 Meet Bill
63 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
54 Mister Lonely
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
52 Noise
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
55 Pathology
48 Penelope
90 Persepolis
62 Planet B-Boy
xx Plumm Summer, A
67 Praying with Lior
46 Previous Engagement, A
72 Priceless
17 Prom Night
69 Redbelt
72 Roman de gare
48 Run, Fat Boy, Run
85 Savages, The
24 Sex and Death 101
66 Shelter
75 Shotgun Stories
40 Sleepwalking
67 Snow Angels
64 Son of Rambow
71 Standard Operating Procedure
76 Stuff and Dough
64 Surfwise
xx Tashan
82 Taxi to the Dark Side
57 Teeth
56 Then She Found Me
55 Tracey Fragments, The
56 Turn the River
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
59 Under the Same Moon
76 Unforeseen, The
xx Unsettled
91 Up the Yangtze
55 Vice
79 Visitor, The
64 Water Lilies
45 Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57 Without the King
74 Witnesses, The
63 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Dead Man's Shoes
Magnolia Pictures


7.7

based on 14 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 14 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Paddy Considine, Gary Stretch, Toby Kebbell, Neil Bell, and Stuart Wolfenden

A genre-defying film blending horror, supernatural elements, comedy, and social realism. Set in a Midlands village, it explores the underbelly of contemporary rural Britain in communities where crime is unchecked and drugs, intimidation, and power games are blandly accepted as the fabric of daily life. (Magnolia Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Shane Meadows Paddy Considine Paul Fraser (additional material)
DIRECTED BY:	Shane Meadows
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 5, 2006 Theatrical: May 12, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	90 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

For all Dead Man's Shoes' well-paced, well-observed boondocks melodrama, its premise seems simultaneously slender and overheated.

Film Threat Felix Vasques Jr.

An original, complex, and utterly gruesome revenge parable, and never portrays its characters as black and white. Considine handles his performance like a pro, and only adds to the pure skill behind it.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

This is no simplistic vigilante movie. Like Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance" trilogy, it explores the nature of the beast of revenge, leaving the audience in a sweat of dread.

The New York Times Laura Kern

The always fantastic Paddy Considine evokes both sensitivity and explosiveness.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Meadows loses control as he goes along, veering into assorted noodling and sacrificing the knife's-edge clarity of the early going for something arty and artificial.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Very slowly builds to a powerful climax for this arty cross between "Straw Dogs" and "First Blood."

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Though the story is formulaic, the bleakly naturalistic performances give it an uncomfortable sting.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The imagery is exotically grungy and jumbled by flashback, but in the end, the picture's more pulp than juice.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The film is filled with deeply unpleasant and stupid people whose vapid speech is largely incomprehensible due to thick regional accents.

Variety Derek Elley

Film plays as a quirky Brit riff on everything from U.S. slasher pics to revenge oaters but without Meadows' usual psychological complexity.

Village Voice Luke Y. Thompson

Dead Man's Shoes is all about revenge, but in trying to be one of those serious revenge films that questions violence while indulging in it, it manages to keep virtually all the characters unsympathetic and uninteresting.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A shocking revelation near the end explains the soldier's nihilistic rage but simultaneously tears a gigantic hole in the plot, leaving little to admire but Considine's typically penetrating performance.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Like so many movies of its kind, Dead Man's Shoes gets hopelessly lost in vicious process, and so loses all sight of anything you might optimistically call insight.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

There are flashes of grim humor interspersed with the murders, but not enough wit to elevate this movie beyond its primary identity: grisly revenge fantasy.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Rich R. gave it a10:
Are you kidding? This is a great film, made even greater because Paddy Considine (one of the best actors in the English language, who stole the show in In America) is in it. Then, to top it off, Toby Kebbell, who is in Control, the Ian Curtis movie? This is a stone great film. Perfectly paced, perfectly acted and shot, perfectly written. Paddy should get more lead parts. Few actors can show as much emotion, menace, and vulnerability.

Neil F. gave it a10:
I'm sorry but 52% is shocking. This is one of the finest, most realistic gritty depictions of modern Brittish culture.

Benji gave it a9:
I'm disappointed in the state of these reviews, as with everywhere else. The film is without a doubt one of the most emotionally powerful films with this level of grim violence that I've ever seen. It forces you to think as it throws you from being right behind the protagonist (the truly brilliant Considine) to being sympathetic to the criminals who tortured his brother. The critics over the pond in the US need to see past difficult accents and appreciate the intensity of what's being said and demanded of the viewer. Plenty of US made films are no more comprehensible due to regional accents, but they seem to believe American is "the standard".

Rose gave it a9:
I don't think I've ever seen reviews on Metacritic so heavily influenced by cultural diferences. I can't believe the score this film got, although I think it may be largely because of the American audience. Dead Man's Shoes is uttely unusual, well made, superbly acted and brutally affecting. Just because it is unlike the usual predictable trite Hollywood turns out, it does not make it a 'bland English Death Wish'!

Darren G. gave it an8:
Excellent little film. Its about time it hit dvd.

Dan W. gave it a9:
I'm amazed how many critics appear not to have "got" this film. The premise is fairly straight and simple, but its executed perfectly, with brilliantly believable, well acted characters all round. I found the gang members' unfamiliarity with death particularly well observed and portrayed - its not like drug dealers are constantly popping caps in heads - they exist in their own little world of their own creation, just like everyone and when that bubble is broken, they'll feel just as vulnerable as anyone else. The subject of Britishness looms large when considering this film, and is obviously the reason so many got the wrong end of the stick. For me, its the first "British Movie" I've watched in which the director feels no need to draw attention to, or emphasise the fact that its set in England. Noone hams up their accent in front of the camera for once and the script doesn't go to pointless lengths to include pub references.

Mase gave it a5:
Not nearly as vicious as people might leave you to believe. Sort of a bland English Death Wish. Spends way to much time with the dopey hood characters and too little with Paddy. Makes you want to the characters to die because they are annoying and not because they abused a mentally challenged boy.

Dead Man's Shoes Magnolia Pictures

Dead Man's Shoes
Magnolia Pictures