BRASSED OFF (1996) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Mark Herman
Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald, Ewan McGregor,
Jim Carter, Stephen Tompkinson, Peter Gunn
A great piece of working-class propaganda, about a depressed English coal-mining community and the amateur brass band that helps hold it together. A movie that wears its emotions, especially its anger, on its sleeve, with no qualifications or apologies to anybody. It plays like a giant gob of spit in the eye of Margaret Thatcher, but it's so funny, honest and well-aimed that you'd have to be a stone-hearted Tory not to be affected by it. The day I saw it, the company I was working for laid off 10 percent of its work force. Hopefully, your timing will be less dramatic than that.
Pete Postlethwaite
(1946-2011)
