Dead Man’s Shoes (2004)

For all Dead Man's Shoes' well-paced, well-observed boondocks melodrama, its premise seems simultaneously slender and overheated.

An original, complex, and utterly gruesome revenge parable, and never portrays its characters as black and white. Considine handles his performance like a pro, and only adds to the pure skill behind it.

This is no simplistic vigilante movie. Like Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance" trilogy, it explores the nature of the beast of revenge, leaving the audience in a sweat of dread.

The always fantastic Paddy Considine evokes both sensitivity and explosiveness.

Very slowly builds to a powerful climax for this arty cross between "Straw Dogs" and "First Blood."