Word: combos
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...good times can't last. When macho skinhead Combo (played by a snarling Stephen Graham) turns up at a party, fresh out of jail, things are about to go awry. Quickly the alpha Combo sets about ousting Woody with a classic divide-and-rule speech about the need for "proud warriors" to defend England's green and pleasant land. Having then established himself as a surrogate father to Shaun, Woody drags the remaining members of the gang, after several desertions, to a fascist National Front rally...
...Typically, Meadows probes deeper than simple black-white characterizations, even eliciting a quiet sympathy for the fearsome Combo when, during an intimate conversation with Shaun, he hints at being abandoned by his own father. Nevertheless our gaze is averted when the once sweet-and-fragile Shaun starts to change, first daubing racist abuse around the town's walkways and then terrorizing a "Paki" newsagent in emulation of his new mentor. Our fears are confirmed: Shaun has been transformed into a neo-Nazi footsoldier in-the-making...
...Combo admits as much himself when he attempts to befriend the only black member of Woody's gang - the cheekily named Milky - reminiscing about how, when he joined the "original" skinheads back in the late 1960s, they all stood proud under the banner of racial unity. When Milky begins to talk about his extended family, Combo's eyes well-up. Half-ashamed, half-envious of what he misses most, Combo is poised on a knife-edge before the film turns toward its hideous, and inevitable, climax...
...undue emphasis to the seamier side of the country's recent past. A Sunday Times review by critic Cosmo Landesman dismissed the film's portrayal of 1980s (predominantly) white-working class as "unconvincing," railing against a "fatuous" attempt to link the war in the Falklands with the one that Combo wants to fight back in England...
...readers and viewers of Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret,” a self-help book/DVD combo that extols the virtues of positive thinking, would say yes. Simon & Schuster recently ordered a reprint of two million copies, as the book’s chipper readers have spread the gospel of optimism at office water coolers throughout the country. The current frenzy erupted after Oprah hosted Byrne and several other self-help savants on her show last month...