Rodolfo Fogwill’s recently translated Malvinas Requiem brings us back to 1983 and the Falklands/Malvinas war, told through the perspective of a group of Argentinean deserters holed up waiting for the fighting to be over, hoping to survive. For these ‘armadillos’, the British who occasionaly enter the stage are all “clean-shaven, fresh-faced, grinning the colgate grin”. They’re better trained, better equipped, better fed – and, well just better.

Shane Meadows film, This is England is set, in a sense, around the Falklands War too, but its central characters, while English, have far more in common with the Armadillos of Fogwill’s requiem than the colgate-grinning fighting machines that are flashed through newsclippings at the films beginings. This is a film about how the footsoldiers live back home, far away from supposed imperial glory.

The film’s central character, Shaun (played brilliantly by Thomas Turgoose, found by the film’s casting crew while bunking school apparently) , a loosely autobiographical figure for the film’s director Meadows, starts the film with a mop of redish hair, flares, and without a father, orphaned by the Falklands war. He’s bullied at school, clashes with his mother, and with the local Pakistani shop-keeper. His only solace is when he’s consoled and accepted into a local skinhead gang. His initiation into skinhead culture takes us into a world of gang-loyalty, fashion, drugs, and tragically racism and xenophobia. All told in grim northern accents in Loachian spontaneity.

The drama is good, and solid – but with few surprises. We see Shaun go from troubled kid, to happy and accepted skinhead in a multi-racial gang where it’s all about Ben Sherman shirts, Doc Martens, shaved heads and music. As if on cue, a third of the way into the film, tension enters stage-left with the appearance of Combo, an alpha-male recently released from jail. He arrives forcing an incoherent politics of nationalism and racism on the gang. He throws in racist cracks, but seemingly respects the gang’s non-white member Milky. Soon the gang is torn asunder, and Shaun goes for the BNP influenced Combo, falling under his spell believing that the only way to commemorate his fallen father is to be a race warrior.

This is a brave film in many respects. Brave for taking the generally unloved Skinhead culture as it’s protagonist. Brave for giving us the truly terrifying image of Shaun, Combo and a gang of skinheads mercilessly attacking a Pakistani shopkeeper. The violence of a twelve year old boy spitting out ‘You Paki Bastard’ is almost more shocking than the actual bloodshed that ensues in the film.

For such a grim and violent film, there is an abiding sense of nostalgia though, and therein lies one of the biggest qualms I have. We’re treated to some excellent two-tone, reggae, and punk on the soundtrack, ranging from the Toots and Maytals through to the UK Subs, but the early 1980’s was also the time of Howard Jones’ No one is to blame, and no-one really is to blame in this film where violence explodes predictably and terrifyingly.

Combo, played taut as a wire in a brilliant performance by Stephen Graham, brings all the trouble to the fore. He’s in love with Lol, the girlfriend of his only vague rival Woody, an unrequited love which eventually acts as the catalyst for the film’s shocking finale, but this is no explanation for Combo’s violent streak – he’s already done a spell in Jail before being spurned. The suggestion is given that he’s fallen under foul influences in Jail, being fed a BNP xenophobic line, but once out of prison and offered the chance to live alongside his skinhead ‘brothers’ he divides primarily on national/racial lines (and in this multiracial skinhead paradise, there’s only one non-white). There’s an absent or abusive father hinted at, and Margaret Thatcher is predictably (and reasonably, it should be added) called to account for his explosive anger. What’s not suggested, prior to or after Combo’s arrival, is that gang culture is by its nature exclusive and from that perspective it’s just a hop skip and a pogo to racism’s door. Is it a surprise that a culture that depends so much upon stark visual symbols would decide that skin colour should be a factor on whether you’re in or out?

The film is gripping, told well, and packs a raw emotional punch particularly in its final scene. It’s brave to take on a subject that is sidestepped for the most part, or seen in stark black and white terms. That in part Meadows sees things through rose tinted glasses is forgiveable, given that there’s no ambiguity about his condemnation of racism and indeed nationalism by the end of this journey.

It may be set in the 1980’s but like Fogwill’s excellent Malvinas Requiem it speaks volumes for today.