People are voting emotionally.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I stuck this one for thirty minutes, until I could take no more.Is it a comedy? No, it's not in the slightest amusing.Drama? Nope.Romance? Definitely no.SciFi? Possibly, the characters don't seem to inhabit any of the planets I'm familiar with.Seriously, this is a terrible effort. Long, meandering shots which lead nowhere. Dreadful people with accents that are incomprehensible. Situations that have absolutely no relevance to whatever plot there may be. Cuts from one venue to another with no indication what connection they have.The cinematography is quite reasonable. That's all, folks.

On the surface this suggests it's going to be a very enjoyable film . Robert Carlyle stars in a British take on the spaghetti western and the opening scene is a good hook where an eccentric Ricky Tomlinson appears on a daytime TV chat show as a singing cowboy . Make no mistake Britain still leads the world when it comes to eccentrics and the film's early stages continues in this light hearted vein Being a British film however it can't sustain the opening and the more the film continues the more and more unengaging it becomes . I don't know if it's this viewer rather than Shane Meadows who is to blame but I found myself becoming more and more disinterested as the story unravelled . The fact that once again I felt I was watching something that was more of an overproduced production for television rather than a cinematic film didn't help either In short this is another Brit flick that resembles the archive footage of the early space program . By this I mean the rocket boosters are fired , the structure slowly rises above the ground , the audience sits open mouthed waiting for something wonderful to happen then the whole structure comes crashing down giving way to a sense of anti-climax

I generally like Shane Meadows, his honest writing and depiction of what early 21st century average life in Britain is actually like, is both appealing and refreshing.This one (I re-watched after many years and seen all his later work) is just a bit of a tangled mess (hence my summary title). It was great to watch the great Kathy Burke in a dominant (yes!) role now that she's concentrating on theatre direction these days. Also, her screen hubbie, a rather ridiculous wannabe country singer in the shape of Ricky Tomlinson.Robert Carlyle plays to form as a real piece of ***t who is after getting his ex back. I soon found his constant shouting, swearing and nastiness wearying and Ryhs Ifans' counter example, as poor Shirley Henderson's dopey, lily-livered 'boyfriend' equally annoying. I wanted to shout out loud 'forget them both', but this being drama, the opposite happens of course.The lighter moments, I suppose were intended to punctuate this domestic misery with an air of humanity. But, most of the time, they look stupidly careless, leaving you unsure whether they were intentional, or not. I did like the overall premise, especially at the end, when the subversive comparison to the classic western becomes apparent, though the setting is a modern English city's housing estate over a hundred years later. The Sierra Cosworth being the equivalent of a wild stallion...?Meadow's work, though, is always of much merit and the fact that he has gotten himself a niche and etched himself a position on that elite panel of independent Brit directors whose work is admired equally by critics and public alike, is to be much admired. It also means that this quite early offering from him is still above average.

The film left me speechless and for all the wrong reasons! 'Once Upon a Time in the Midlands' was like watching a soap but without the obscure narrative and action which, although are normally totally unbelievable, I watch them because they're humorous - unlike this film which is supposed to be humorous in some places just made me cringe. With the clear chemistry between the actors and their ability to act it should be an easy feat to move the audience, if it wasn't for the completely disengaging narrative. I didn't expect a lot from this film (being low budget) but like any viewer, I was expecting an engaging narrative with clear lines of progression, culminating in a resolution that made you feel that you had been on some journey with its characters, yet alas, this was not the case. The film title 'Once upon a time in the Midlands' sets the viewers up for thinking that they are going to be told an engaging story (like a child does when they hear Once upon a time at the beginning of a story book.) I thought I was going to see a a plot with concequence, not a reflection of the trivialities that go on in some households everyday and if I'd have wanted to watch reality TV I would have watched Big Brother or another reality TV show that clogs up our tevevisions and 'dumbs down' the viewer.