THIS IS ENGLAND (4.5 STARS)

2007 release that takes place in 1983 in Northern England. 12 year old boy Shawn, had recently lost his father in a war, gets picked on in school, and is an all around unhappy boy, gets taken in by a group of skinheads. Shawn is received with open arms to this loyal family environment of friends. He starts dressing like a skin and kids stop picking on him at school.

Theres to kinds of skinheads. Theres the good skins and the bad skins. Good skins like to have fun and brake things and they don't believe in racism, and bad skins like to have fun and brake things and they hate things and they are racist and they want the all immigrants to go back to where they came. This gang was the good kind until an old member comes back from prison with a new idea of what they should be spending their time doing, which splits the group in two and he convinces Shawn to join up with him.

It's a story about the loss of innocence. It's about how most of us grew up wanting to be apart of something.

I 100% relate to this film. I loved the whole thing. I love the music, the look of it, the era. The style of clothes and hair were exactly right.

No apologies, no holding back. The writer/directer was exactly that kid. The interview with him in the end was great. They asked him 2 questions and he managed to sum up everything about what it means to be skin and that era and everything it all meant. Led me to believe he was a genius. The commentary on the disc was fun... the kid, directer, and producer. They were all such good friends. I really like that the directer had obviously kept up with him over the past 2 years. Knew he had a paper route and a current girlfriend, and stuff like that. There was a lot of laughing.