England Is Mine

Singer-songwriter Morrissey was unquestionably an important force in English music during the 1980s, but in Mark Gill's film about the artist's formative years in Manchester, he comes across as rather obnoxious—and, at least here, boring. Jack Lowden plays young Steven, initially (in the late ‘70s) with a mop of long hair and then (in the early ‘80s) with a much shorter cut. But while the hairstyle changes, he remains the same morose, taciturn figure throughout. A shy 17-year-old trapped in a stifling middle-class family, Steven spends his days scribbling lyrics in his notebook and writing savage critiques of local rock bands. Eventually he meets Billy Duffy (Adam Lawrence), with whom he founds The Nosebleeds, but Duffy soon leaves for greener pastures, forcing Steven to endure first a dreary desk job under an odious boss and then a stint as an orderly in a hospital (where he encounters an old high school sweetheart dying of cancer), until Johnny Marr (Laurie Kynaston) shows up at his doorstep one day, asking whether he'd like to join a new band. The Smiths are born! One can sympathize with Gill's difficulty making a film about Morrissey without the subject's permission or access to The Smiths music catalogue, but England Is Mine feels like a long, turgid prologue, a film that might more accurately be titled A Portrait of the Artist as an Insufferable Young Twit. Not recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by writer-director Mark Gill and star Jack Lowden, the behind-the-scenes featurettes “Smoke & Mirrors” (22 min.) and “Sad Facts Widely Known” (9 min.), and an image gallery. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a disappointing bio-pic.] (F. Swietek)