Dek, a decent but somewhat dull man, enjoys a happy existence with beloved girlfriend Shirley. They live together with her 12-year-old, Marlene: her daughter by the delinquent Jimmy, who flew the coop years ago and hasn't been heard from since. Dek loves Shirley so much that he proposes to her on national television.
C'era una volta in Inghilterra, נישואין נוסח אנגליה, Érase una vez en los Midlands, 원스 어폰 어 타임 인 미들랜드, Era Uma Vez uma Família, Tenkrát v Midlands
UK15
USAR
Czechia12+
Czechia
UK
USA
Cinematic Time Capsule
2002 Marathon - Film #73
"You told me he was in prison… I believed you"
It’s a high noon standoff between the meekly Rhys Ifans and bad boy Robert Carlyle as they compete for the affections of single mom, Shirley Henderson.
This early flick from Shane Meadows brings a taste of the old west to modern day England’s East Midlands for an eccentric dramedy of a messy suburban love triangle.
My biggest complaint is that it simply isn’t eccentric enough. There’s a few inspired moments, like a random clown attack, that made me think the film was about to take off.... and I kept anticipating the moment when the wheel’s would finally come flying off the wagon… but they never did. The whole thing merely muddled along the domestic trail and left me wanting a whole lot more.
This certainly has its charms, but for a Shane Meadows effort it’s sadly a bit of a disappointment. It’s a sort of riff on the Spaghetti Western format, only with the dry and dusty wastes of the American Midwest swapped out for the mundane, suburban sprawl of the East Midlands of England—a place where nothing much seems to happen other than a lot of boozing, bingo and petty domestic quarrelling. There are many other details that allude to this western parody beyond just the title itself—a Morricone-inspired score full of guitar twangs and languid trumpet motifs; a botched robbery; an outlaw on the run; an angry posse of bandits trying to reclaim their stolen loot; and a classic love triangle…
Few British directors have managed to capture onscreen a realistic view of working-class people and the neighbourhoods they come from. Shane Meadows knows all about the people he writes about, he's still one of them, despite the success of several of his films and the brilliant television series that spawned from his film, This Is England. Meadows has a deftness of touch, a swagger in his writing that sounds authentic, and I've seen and enjoyed almost everything the Uttoxeter born writer/director has produced, including this one, where a certain Robert Carlyle shows Meadows just what a Scottish legend-in-the-making really is.
Once Upon a Time in the Midlands doesn't have Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio starring in it, in fact I…
A British provincial romantic comedy with a Western-style storyline.
Shane Meadows follow-up to 'A Room for Romeo Brass', while perfectly fine and funny in its own right, is a bit of a disappointment after the excellence of the previous film.
The three central characters - Shirley (Shirley Henderson), her daughter Marlene (Finn Atkins), and her boyfriend Dek (Rhys Ifans) - are uniformly excellent but the rest of the cast, or at least the well-known ones - are either parodies of themselves or stereotypes.
It seems Meadows' previous successes led to pressure to include better-known names to justify his increased budget, but to this viewer this distracts and detracts from the heart of the story.
And the less said about the hard-men Glaswegian characters the better, although they did make it more reminiscent of a Bill Forsyth film.
There are very few as good as Shane Meadows at elevating the mundanity of regular life into heightened drama, however this movie felt like it never really reached the levels it was aspiring for. The name, and a few of the opening scene (as well as some musical choices) hint at a Western style tale that has been transplanted into the Midlands, and the movie probably would have worked better overall had it continued down that path. Meadows also sticks with the two leading men so closely, when it's probably Shirley Henderson's character that we need to know inside and out. She is the one making decisions, but we barely know her, so we have no sense as to what is driving her in certain directions. However, the supporting cast, namely Kathy Burke and Rickey Tomlinson, are wonderful and always a joy to spend time with.
"Get yourself a new shellsuit."
Always enjoyable to see Shane Meadows softer side. Nice comedy-drama that had the laughs but also made time to pull at your heart strings. Really was refreshing to see a Glaswegian character that wasn't portrayed as a full on psycho.
My opinion hasn't really changed on this since my 2012 review. The big names and muddled tone suggest the uneasy compromise between artistic vision and studio demands and, although the film has Midlands in the title, the casting is too broad and diverse to pay proper homage to the region, with Scottish, Welsh, Scouse and Cockney performers. As we know from the extras on the dvd, Paddy Considine was playing Dek during the initial workshops and, no offence to Rhys Ifans who is very good here, I'd love to see that film. Equally, I feel that if this were a proper indie feature from Meadows then there's be actors like Ladene Hall and Seamus O'Neill in the roles that ultimately…
Shane Meadows directs this oddball western set in Nottingham, which pits Rhys Ifans against Robert Carlyle to win the heart of a woman.
It's good fun, and Ifans gets the majority of laughs with his timid Dec as he grows a backbone through the film, however the supporting cast are also full of funny lines and observation.
I think the films major problem is it's Western motif, hardly capturing the look all that well, the music does a good job of mimicking something of a second rate Ennio Morricone, which suits the material really well, along with some moments of cinematography. However the genre applied only adds so little to proceedings and it never really fully topples westerns on it's…
Considered Shane Meadow's one and only flop, this is actually an ok film that has gotten better with each viewing in my book.
The germ of the story is pretty good enough, the characters are as endearing, likeable, flawed, realistic and, in some cases, as scary as most of Meadows' creations, but they are hampered this time around by the casting of too many well known names in these roles; some of whom are just sleep walking through it (Ricky Tomlinson, essentially playing his sitcom persona) This is, to my mind, the main fault of the film - it's too commercial. This was when the studios finally sat up and paid attention to the excellent work Meadows had been doing…
The idea of a western film set in working class Britain (Nottingham of all places especially) sounds like a very fun thing to do, it's so unconventional that it just seems like it would work, but unfortunately this just isn't it. It plays out more as a straight love story with Western music and that was a bit disappointing to me.
It's not without merit though, there is a pretty funny take on the famous Western trope of a final standoff and Shane Meadows does a good job of capturing the mundane and using it to the advantage of the characters. In fact, he always captures those working class characters perfectly and with such realism whether that's the youth of…
