One of Britain's best directors Shane Meadows">- Shane Meadows of This is England and the recent Somers Town - and one of Britain's best actors - Paddy Considine, so menacing in Meadows' A Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man's Shoes, have combined forces for a low budget 'mockumentary'. Set on the fringes of the music industry and reportedly shot in five days it has the odd moment of flair and originality but suffers from a self-indulgent streak. Wisely Meadows has kept it to just 70 minutes.
Considine is the titular Le Donk, a deluded roadie who is the subject of a documentary Meadows is making. It's not completely clear why Meadows has chosen Le Donk as his subject - he's selfish, unlikely to change and one-dimensional - but the hour or more we spend in his company sees a few important days in his life. His estranged partner (Olivia Colman, playing a character that it is very difficult to imagine ever going out with Le Donk, let alone ever being impregnated by him) is about to give birth to their child, and desperately does not want her old flame present.
This suits Le Donk, who has some potential work helping backstage at an 'Article Monkeys' (as he calls them) gig in Manchester, which he sees as the ideal chance to promote his protege, an overweight fledgling rapper by the name of Scor-Zay-Zee.
Meadows mixes fact and fiction and he has rarely appeared so much in one of his own films. The 'Articles' themselves do pop up and there are a few enjoyable scenes as Le Donk realizes there may be an opportunity to muscle in on Scor's big day, no matter how unlikely success might seem. The improvised nature recalls some of Meadows' early work before he hit the big time with Twenty Four Seven (in particular no budget classics such as Where's the Money, Ronnie?).
Considine's character, which he has been working on since the two first knew each other at college in the early 90s, also calls to mind the insufferable Tommy Saxondale from Steve Coogan's BBC show. Interestingly in a recent newspaper interview, Meadows suggested that Coogan had seen Considine's early version of the character.
In the end though this is minor stuff, as was Meadows' last outing, the Eurostar-funded Somers Town. It's time for this outstanding director to make another great film - these interludes only hint at what he is capable of.
Paul Hurley
