Having garnered acclaim with coming-of-age drama A Room For Romeo Brass, British director Shane Meadows reunites with actor Paddy Considine for Dead Man's Shoes, "a thorny take on the morality of crime and punishment". Its blood and guts portrayal of a man seeking revenge for the murder of his brother earned rave reviews, yet this played to a relatively small audience of moviegoers. Perhaps it'll find the foothold it deserves on DVD.

If The Shoe Fits

Meadows has always played it fast and loose when it comes to working with a script, as evidenced in five deleted and extended scenes. It's a showcase for some great improvisation, particularly in a sequence where Soz (Neil Bell) and Tuff (Paul Sadot) get high and Richard (Considine) gives a couple of kids a tutorial in how to stab someone efficiently. (Can't think why that didn't make it into the film!) There's also an alternative ending, which is only slightly different, but definitely more visceral than what appears in the final cut.

This was a film that hit very close to home for Meadows and he makes some shocking confessions in the documentary In Shane's Shoes. As a boy he was taken in by the skinhead subculture, saying, "Ultimately my aim as an 11-year-old was to go to jail." He then goes on to describe a horrifying incident in which he stood by and watched as a friend committed a brutal assault. He admits that the making of the film was really about, "evicting all that guilt". While very disturbing, this is also a fascinating examination of the themes underlying the story.

Northern Soul

Despite the grittiness of the subject matter Meadows' commentary with star Paddy Considine and producer Mark Herbert is a very jovial affair. They could easily be sitting in the pub reminiscing about three crazy weeks where Considine sported a gas mask and pretended to hack a bunch of people to pieces - oh, the laughs they had! Even more raucous is their first attempt at a commentary, which is offered as an Easter egg feature on the audio menu (click on the telephone). "I can't remember nothing useful," says Considine, between lots of schoolboy sniggering. "This is probably one of the worst commentaries ever laid out!"

Thankfully Meadows does get it together for the retake with plenty of notes on story development and his various visual techniques, like the use of grainy black-and-white and Super 8 footage.

Elsewhere a mockumentary short by Meadows called Northern Soul follows a disaffected Northerner (natch) who chucks in his job and his marriage to become a pro-wrestler. It's actually very funny: "I need to be akin with my spirit," explains the sparrow-chested Mark Sherbert (Toby Kebbell). A few snippets of Anjan Sarkar's graphic novel based on Dead Man's Shoes also makes a quirky addition to this DVD which is definitely worth trying on for size.

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