The Virtues

Starts slow, but really picks up, with the last 20 minutes a masterclass in how to build tension with simple parallel editing; be warned though, it's not pleasant viewing

A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

• Raymond Chandler; The Long Goodbye (1953)

Violators cannot live with the truth: survivors cannot live without it.

• Chrystine Oksana; Safe Passage to Healing: A G__uide for Survivors of Ritual Abuse (1994)

I've been a fan of Shane Meadows, co-writer and director of The Virtues, for a long time. Whilst most people would probably cite This is England (2006) and its three spin-off TV miniseries, This is England '86 (2010), This is England '88 (2011), and This is England '90 (2015) as their introduction, I've been a fan since his second film, Twenty Four Seven (1997). But it was his third film, A Room For Romeo Brass (1999) that really caught my eye. A fascinating spin on the "have-a-go hero" genre, the film featured an extraordinary performance by Paddy Considine, who also starred in Meadows's best film thus far, Dead Man's Shoes (2004). Fast forward to the This is England franchise, and undeniably the most fascinating and unexpected character arc is that of Andrew 'Combo' Gascoigne played by one of the finest actors alive today, Stephen Graham. Introduced as an irredeemable racist, a proud member of the National Front, by the end of This is England '90, he had become the most sympathetic and heroic character on the show, thanks in no small part to Graham's transformative performance. And much as A Room For Romeo Brass was a breakout for Considine, so too was This is England for Graham, and much as he once again worked with Considine, with incredible results, so too has Meadows once again worked with Graham, res...