In July1983, Shaun Fields is a troubled 12-year-old boy living with his widowed mother Cynthia in the East Midlands. Shaun is alienated and frequently antagonized at school and around town. On the last day of his school term, Shaun gets into a fight at school with a boy who insults him for wearing wide bell-bottoms and making an offensive joke about his father, who was killed in the Falklands War.
Shaun later comes across a gang of young skinheads, led by Richard "Woody" Woodford, who feels sympathy for Shaun and invites him to join the group. He introduces Shaun to Milky, the gang's only black skinhead; Pukey; Kes; and the overweight, dim-witted Gadget. Despite some initial hostilities between Shaun and Gadget, the gang accepts Shaun as a member. Shaun bonds closely with Woody and his girlfriend Lorraine "Lol" Jenkins, who shave his head and gift him clothes to better fit into the skinhead gang. Shaun also develops a romantic relationship with Michelle, known as Smell, an older girl who dresses in a new wave, New Romantic style.
One night, the gang attend a house party joined by Meggy, an older man affiliated with the skinheads. Suddenly, the group is ambushed by a large, bald and tattooed man wielding a machete, who in turn is attacked by Andrew "Combo" Gascoigne, a first-wave skinhead. Combo reveals the attack was merely a prank and introduces the man as his associate Banjo. Woody announces Combo has just finished a three-year-long prison sentence and introduces him to the rest of the gang. Whilst Combo is a charismatic, albeit unstable man with sociopathic tendencies, he expresses English nationalist and racist views, alienating Woody, Lol, Kes, and offending Milky. Later on, he attempts to enforce his leadership over the other skinheads. During a speech, Combo inadvertently upsets Shaun by mentioning the Falklands War, who reveals his father's death to the gang, which Combo then uses to manipulate the boy into joining his side. Consequently, the gang splits, with Shaun, the belligerent Pukey, Meggy and Gadget, who feels bullied by Woody for his weight, choosing Combo over Woody's apolitical gang.
Shaun finds a father figure in Combo, who in turn is impressed by, and identifies with, Shaun. Combo's group attend a National Front meeting. On the drive home, Pukey expresses doubt over their racist and nationalist politics. Enraged, Combo stops the car and throws Pukey out, assaulting him physically and verbally, before abandoning him in an isolated part of the countryside. As time goes by, the gang intimidate local Asian children and spray racist slogans on Asian shopkeeper Mr. Sandhu's walls, while Shaun, previously banned from the shop, launches a bigoted verbal assault on Sandhu with demands for alcohol and cigarettes. Combo viciously threatens Sandhu with a machete and the gang steal goods for a birthday party under Combo's instructions.
Later on, Combo becomes upset after Lol, Woody's girlfriend, rejects him when he admits that he has loved her since they had sex years before. To console himself, Combo buys cannabis from Milky and invites him to a party. While intoxicated, Combo and Milky bond, but Combo becomes increasingly bitter and envious, all wrapped up in a racist viewpoint, when Milky shares details of his many relatives, comfortable family life and happy upbringing; everything that Combo lacked. An enraged Combo enters a frenzied state and brutally beats Milky unconscious, while Banjo holds down Shaun and Meggy watches on in horror. Combo angrily throws Shaun out of his flat and then assaults Banjo and Meggy, after the former expresses a desire to further harm the unconscious Milky, before evicting them as well. Horrified at the realization of what he has done, a remorseful Combo weeps over Milky until Shaun returns and the two take Milky to a hospital.
Some time later, Shaun is contemplating the incident whilst looking at a picture of his late father. Cynthia enters and assures him that Milky will be alright. Shaun is then shown walking along the beach, where he throws his St George's Flag, a gift from Combo, into the sea.
Much of the film was shot in residential areas of Nottingham, including St Ann's, Lenton, and The Meadows, with one section featuring abandoned houses at RAF Newton, a former airbase close to Bingham, Nottinghamshire.[4] The opening fight was filmed at Wilsthorpe Business and Enterprise College, a secondary school in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, close to the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire boundary.[5][6] Additional scenes such as 'the docks' were filmed in Turgoose's home town of Grimsby.[7] Turgoose was 13 at the time of filming.[8] He had never acted before, was banned from his school play for bad behaviour, and demanded £5 to turn up for the film's auditions.[9] The film was dedicated to Turgoose's mother, Sharon, who died of cancer on 29 December 2005; while she never saw the film, she saw a short preview. The cast attended her funeral.[citation needed]
Setting
The film is set in an unidentified town in the Midlands. Although much of the film was shot on location in Nottingham, a number of scenes portray the town's docks, which precludes this inland city being the setting for the action. Similarly, the dialects of the main characters are drawn from a wide geographical area.[citation needed]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 7.70/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A moving coming-of-age tale that captures the despair among England's working-class youth in the 1980s".[10]Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on 23 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[11] This made it the tenth best reviewed film of the year.[12]
The film appeared on several US critics' top ten lists of 2007; it was third on the list by Newsweek's David Ansen, seventh on the list by The Oregonian's Marc Mohan, and ninth on the list by the Los Angeles Times' Kevin Crust.[13]
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