The characters and locations blend in seamlessly, providing even the most uninformed viewer with a dazzling dose of context for this quite unsettling coming of age tale.

Following the path of the disturbingly subtle “Dead Man's Shoes” (2004), British director Shane Meadows once again proves that he's most at home exploring the most terrible and despicable things that ordinary people can bring themselves to, as well as the long road they walk on the way.

Perhaps Meadows' most autobiographical work to date, “This is England” (2007) follows 12-year-old Shaun, in a mind-blowing first performance by newcomer Thomas Turgoose, through a deteriorating coastal city in, you guessed it, England.

The year is 1983, and the U.K.’s involvement in the Falklands has left Shaun fatherless and angry. After being continually bullied at school, Shaun finds solidarity in a charismatic young skinhead, Woody (Joe Gilgun), and his motley crew of fellow misfits and outcasts.

It is through Woody that Shaun meets the much darker and angrier Combo, played by an almost unrecognizable Stephan Graham, (probably last seen to American audiences in Guy Ritchie's crime caper, “Snatch”). Combo strikes a rapport with the impressionable Shaun, introducing him to the violent world of British nationalism with a father-like candor.

Despite following very closely in the footsteps of “American History X,” the film comes off as no less poignant and powerful, presenting a Britain seldom seen. Devoid of the James Bonds or Hugh Grants, Meadows' England is home to real people getting swept up in disturbingly real problems.

Shot in an eerie documentary style, the film’s visual aesthetics include sweeping, misty green landscapes, gray and desolate sea sides and the village's urban decay, coupled with a decidedly unglamorous take on the lead players. The package in its entirety seems to lend a great deal of credibility to the title’s claim.

Meadows gets uncomfortably close to his subjects, as if they were his own friends and family. The result is astonishingly natural performances by such a young cast, and what could be a career making one by Graham, who brings a proper bit of realism and humanity to the virulent, yet conflicted Combo.

Meadows' previous film, “Dead Man's Shoes,” starring Paddy Considine, was a study of the more horrifying and unsettling aspects of restraint in the revenge drama. “This is England” brings this same subtlety to the period piece, with such an incredible emphasis on realism that it almost transforms the film into a type of docudrama.

Meadows brings the 1980s alive in a way seldom seen, without cliché or caricature, a wholly matter-of-fact presentation. Pockmarked with Meadows' traditional inclusion of archival footage and home movies, the characters and locations blend in seamlessly, providing even the most uninformed viewer with a dazzling dose of context for this quite unsettling coming of age tale.

“This is England” goes a long way in reinforcing Shane Meadows as one the U.K.'s most important filmmakers. He has an uncanny knack for prying up the very recent past to show a devastating portrait of an agitated nation racked with violence and unrest, under the Iron Lady Thatcher. It is as if to say with a solemn hint of regret, this was England.

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