In a typical English working-class town, the juveniles have nothing more to do than hang around in gangs. One day, Alan Darcy, a highly motivated man with the same kind of youth experience, starts trying to get the young people off the street and into doing something they can believe in: Boxing. Darcy opens a boxing club, aiming to bring the rival gangs together.
Acting
Hoskins carries quiet desperation in every slump.
Direction
Meadows' early handheld intimacy before This Is England.
Director
Shane Meadows
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot in just 21 days on a £1.5 million budget, Meadows used real Nottingham locals as extras to ground the boxing scenes.
This was Meadows' second feature and helped establish the 'Midlands miserabilism' aesthetic that would define British indie cinema in the 2000s.
GB
