Made in Britain

Tim Roth blasted to the forefront of edgy screen actors with this bravura tour-de-force performance for British TV in 1982. Perhaps the finest work of an actor who has had many great performances since. It's a crying shame that most of his fans in North America have yet to see it.

This film blows me away. First saw it ages ago when Public TV in NYC daringly broadcast it unheralded and only one time. They've never shown it again, nor has it ever been shown elsewhere in the US to my knowledge. I was ecstatic recently when I managed to view the film again, for the first time in over 10 years, via a European DVD. Anyone who has seen this film knows what I mean when I say it is insane for it NOT to be released on this side of the Pond. Movies about violent youths and skinheads are not unknown over here, just not this good. The recent American History X, as fine as it was, doesn't manage a fraction of the raw intensity of Made in Britain.

Trevor, a bright, autonomous, 16 year-old is also a seething, out-of-control deeply antisocial skinhead. He's not part of a gang, not part of a clique, he's a totally alienated individual who sees himself as part of a movement. It's not enough to say that Roth is totally believable in the part. The part itself is way, way beyond your expectations when watching a film. Trevor "acts out", but Roth doesn't "act" Trevor, Roth IS Trevor for the duration of this film. Seeing Tim Roth for the first time in this film, you wouldn't initially be sure you were watching an actor play a part. For a while you might believe you were watching a real documentary about a berserk youth committing petty crimes and mayhem and oblivious to the camera. Only through the dramatic pace and development of the film and the inclusion of other, mere mortal, actors might you let the magic slip momentarily and suspect you were watching a fictional movie, but the intensity ratchets up again, and before you know it you're looking at the end-credits and wondering why it's over and wanting more, more!

Trevor on the surface is a deplorable human being: hateful, racist, selfish and violent. At the same time, he is resourceful, intelligent, and in some ways, fragile, yet in others, daring, nothing-left-to-lose. His behavior is self-destructive, his future is bleak. In short, he is fascinating and you spend the whole short 73-minute film alternately shocked, transfixed, amused, bewildered and yet, pulling for him.

If you've seen Tim Roth's other work, and you respect his abilities, you owe it to yourself to do whatever you have to do to see this film. You won't regret it. Meanwhile, someone should cut a deal to release this in North America so all of Tim Roth's hungry fans can see it!

The extremely talented Tim Roth made his acting debut with this powerful little drama. Roth plays Trevor, a teen aged skinhead with no regard for the rules of society. As the story opens, he's being sent to a detention centre while authorities try to decide what to do about him. He doesn't have any real interest in changing his ways, and would prefer to spend his time stealing things, spouting racial hatred, and being a public nuisance in general.

One can tell that 'Made in Britain' was originally made for television. It doesn't attempt to be overtly cinematic, but then it doesn't need to. David Leland wrote the intelligent script, making this an "angry young man" story with a memorable central character. One watches this unfold, doubtful that Trevor will be redeemable at some point, and only vaguely hopeful. When officials try to show him the error of his ways, he shows no interest. His compulsive need to defy authority overrides everything, and he simply refuses to stay out of trouble.

Directed by Alan Clarke ("Scum"), and scored by anarchist musicians The Exploited, this gets a lot of juice from the magnetic performance by Roth. I'm sure people who watched 'Made in Britain' when it was new could sense a brilliant career in the making. Roth is also very nicely supported by Terry Richards, as the impressionable Errol, Bill Stewart, as Peter, Geoffrey Hutchings, as the superintendent, and Sean Chapman ("Hellraiser" 1 and 2) as Barry.

Highly recommended viewing.

Eight out of 10.

Finally got to watch this movie. So true its worth watching even just to watch those expressions. We got a young and promising Tim Roth here playing Trevor the juvenile delinquent skin head. I watched it a second time before deciding to write this review. The first time I felt for the guy, I always felt somewhat that way for the underdog star that rebels against the straight ways of the society we live in. However watching it a second time i realized how annoying he is and how true it is that nobody was giving him any trouble whatsoever and that indeed he was always the one to bring it on himself. Everybody around him does nothing but try to help, OK he says he does not need any help, wants to be left in peace to do whatever he wants, but does that include having him allow others to live in peace? I love it towards the end he really loses it.

From the minute Made in Britain kicks off, with a 17-year-old Tim Roth with skinhead and a swastika tattoo between his eyebrows, slouching into the juvenile court to the strains of The Exploited, the energy never flags. Clarke's patented loping Steadicam follows Trevor (Roth) as he goes from assessment centre to job centre to sniffing glue with a fellow ne'er-do-well to stealing a car and throwing bricks through a Pakistani's front window, seemingly bent on pushing the system to its limits. Trevor doesn't give a f***, and in an amazing second act, set entirely in a basement room, he tells the authorities what he thinks of them: "I'm a star, mate. I'm in exactly the right place at the right time."

Trevor is hateful - he's racist, bullying, utterly selfish and dangerous, but he's also so bright and eloquent that the main feeling on watching the film is wonder at a society that could possible have produced people like this. David Leland, who wrote the film, speculated years later that Trevor would probably have gone on to work in the Stock Exchange in the late Eighties - he might well have been one of the well-heeled cronies of Gary Oldman's Bez in Clarke's 1988 football hooliganism film, The Firm. In the depressed and fearful Britain of 1982, Trevor's manic energy and contempt has no outlet - once Thatcherite policies had helped to boost the British economy, his disbelief in "society" would have been totally at home on the stock market. As Thatcher famously remarked, "There is no such thing as society", and Made in Britain shows how she caused such a state of affairs to come about.

It's also very funny, in a sick kind of way.

I first saw this episode of a few in the series when it was first released and was immediately taken by the story, as well as the performance of Tim Roth.

At the time I tried to find more things that Roth had done on his performance alone in Made In Britain but couldn't. Only years later, thanks to IMDB (cheers guys) did I realise that it was his first major role.

Back to the film. Set in the London I know I could relate to Trevor (Roth) as I was experiencing a similar thing at the time. A youth pushed into an attitude related to the Thatcher ideals of that time which kicked against the system of authority and its patronising values. The film (although intended as a television programme, but now can be viewed as a film in its own right) had all the zeitgeist required for one living in Britain, especially London, at that time. My friends and I spoke of it with much praise as we could relate to its sentiments. Events like the Brixton riots were indicative of such feelings.

Can this film still be relevant today? Frankly, yes. Britain was changing back in '81-'82 in many ways and appears to be swinging in a similar way once again. Only time will tell.

It is a gritty, documentary-style film that holds little back of an individual on a collision course with the imagined or real oppressor. Self-destructing because he feels it is his only freedom. Engaging and somewhat prophetic. You choose. I have not seen the film for many years now but relish the opportunity to view it again.