Once Upon a Time in the Midlands Review
Whenever it draws parallels between its source material -- the classic spaghetti Western Once Upon a Time in the West -- and the mundane details of life in the English midlands, director Shane_Meadows' broad, realist comedy is a winning, knowing farce, worthy of Mike_Leigh or Danny_Boyle at their most buoyant. The more it strays from its template, the more it becomes a conventional romantic comedy -- not the worst quality in the world for a movie to have, but certainly a step down from the trenchant satire of smoky bingo parlors, anonymous pubs, and cookie-cutter houses Meadows establishes in his opening act. Luckily for the director, his performers are all on the same page, with Rhys_Ifans delivering a sly, hilarious variation on his usual shellshocked-naïf routine; Robert_Carlyle lending a healthy dose of swagger to his dashing -- if somewhat pathetic -- ex-paramour character; and Shirley_Henderson anchoring the two leads with her haggard air of common sense. Best of all is the young Finn_Atkins as the daughter who convinces Ifans' Dek to grow a backbone and stand up for himself; their scenes together are refreshingly free of the cloying cuteness usually assigned to the sage-child-mentors-clueless-adult subplot that's all too common to Hollywood romantic comedies. Michael Hastings, Rovi
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