Comedy

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Brassed Off

Miramax

Prominent Features

Film4 Productions

United Kingdom

United States of America

English

Pete Postlethwaite

Tara Fitzgerald

Ewan McGregor

Stephen Tompkinson

Jim Carter

Philip Jackson

Peter Martin

Sue Johnston

Melanie Hill

Mary Healey

Lill Roughley

Peter Gunn

Kenneth Colley

Olga Grahame

Bernard Wrigley

Ken Kitson

Adrian Hood

Sally Adams

Katherine Dow Blyton

Toni Galacki

Sky Ingram

Luke McGann

Christopher Tetlow

Adam Fogerty

Sally Ann Matthews

Tubby Andrews

Ronnie Stevens

Bob Rodgers

Jacqueline Naylor

Vanessa Knox-Mawer

Max Smith

Peter Wallis

Stephen Moore

Olivia Stewart

Mark Herman

Steve Abbott

Michael Ellis

Andy Collins

Sarah Fitzgerald

Sophie Baker

Harry Bowers

Stuart Brereton

Mark Milsome

Chris Plevin

Gavin Tookey

Gordon Hickie

Norma Webb

Tricia Cameron

Brian Read

Amy Roberts

Felicity Joll

Don Taylor

Sallie Evans

Graham Daniel

Ray Merrin

Priscilla John

Jason Adams

Julia Duff

Peter Elliott

Dennis McTaggart

Trevor Jones

David Appleby

Land of bloody hope and glory eh!

Grimley Colliery Brass Band has been going for nigh on a century, but as the town's colliery itself comes under threat of closure due to the drawn out miners strikes, so does the bands very own survival. Giving much relief to a very depressed area, the band are hoping to make the grand finals day at the Royal Albert Hall, could the arrival of Flugelhorn player, Gloria, be just what the band needs? Or is she merely the catalyst to something far more critical?

Brassed Off is the first of what I personally call the Magical British Trio, three films that perfectly portray the British sense of humour during dark depressing times of unemployment. The other two of course are The Full Monty (1997) and Billy Elliot (2000), of which Brassed Off is essentially an appetiser of sorts, the warm up act for the big hitters so to speak. Not to say that Brassed Off is not worthy to sit alongside those well received pictures (home and abroad as they say), it most certainly is, it's just that its blend of humour and strife doesn't find any easy ground, thus making it hard for the undiscerning viewer to be at ease at the right moments. It is in short, unsure of what it primarily wants to be. The humour does work well tho, but it's in the dramatic core of the miners strikes, and the affects they have on the denizens of this quaint colliery town, that Brassed Off truly works, with some scenes literally tugging away at the old heart strings. Then there be the music itself, The Grimethorpe Colliery Band {on whose real life story this film is based} provide the music for the soundtrack, and its most enjoyable, often stirring, and definitely poignant at crucial moments.

The cast are tremendous, Ewan McGregor and Tara Fitzgerald offer up splendid youthful heart, but they are playing second fiddle (or should that be third brass section?) to Pete Postlethwaite and Stephen Tompkinson. As father and son, Postlethwaite and Tompkinson give the film its deep emotional being, each driven by differing needs, Brassed Off's success rests with both men being able to hold the viewers attention from the get go. Tompkinson has made a very profitable and thriving career in British Television, and rightly so, but it remains criminal that he didn't go on and make more well known and profitable full length feature films after his fabulous turn here. Filmed in the ideal Northern English town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Brassed Off is a film that has evident problems, but to someone like me, a Brit who lived thru those depressing days under Margaret Thatcher's government, it's a film that I love for a myriad of reasons, one can only hope that one of those reasons strikes a chord with yourselves.

A completely biased 9/10 from me!

CinemaSerf

A touching drama of a declining mining community in Margaret Thatcher's Britain. Pete Postlethwaite is subtle but forceful in his portrayal of "Danny"; the leader of the Grimley Colliery Band - one of the traditional brass bands that usually accompanied each mine in the North of England, much a there is a choir usually associated with a Welsh one. The story marries the inevitability of the mine closure with the impact on family and relationships throughout this close knit community and uses their band rehearsals as the axis for the plot. Tara Fitzgerald, Ewan McGregor, Philip Jackson and Jim Carter all contribute genuinely to this frequently dryly-humoured ensemble effort and by the end we are all too familiar with Rodrigo's "Concerto de Orange Juice".

Actor Philip Jackson on Brassed Off | Film4

Peter Gunn on Brassed Off | Film4

Grimethorpe Colliery Band give a special home performance of Danny Boy from Brassed Off | Film4

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Brassed Off

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Cast

Pete Postlethwaite

Tara Fitzgerald

Ewan McGregor

Stephen Tompkinson

Jim Carter

Philip Jackson

Peter Martin

Sue Johnston

Melanie Hill

Mary Healey

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