Rating: 
Summary: Strike Up The Band!
Review: A little film with a big heart from a small island with growing reputation for making great movies! BRASSED OFF is a terrific film which loses nothing in translation to an American or Mainland European audience. I highly recommend it, although I warn you to stock up on Kleenex for the Albert Hall scene!
Rating:
Summary: Sentimental story, great performances
Review: This film incorporates a serious story about the plight of modern-day British coal miners within a light-hearted romance about the guys in the colliery brass band. It works mainly because of the sentimental appeal of the story and two very fine performances by Peter Postlethwaite and Steven Thompkinson. Postlethwaite, as the band leader, a retired miner suffering from lung disease as a result of years in the mines, doggedly leads his talented amateur musicians to a national award, even as the closure of the colliery is imminent and their employment prospects grimmer. Thompkinson, as his son, renders a very poignant performance as a young husband desperately in over his head financially and struggling to keep his family together, while catering to his Dad's idealism and illusion that the band is the most important thing in their lives. This is a much darker portrayal of the problems facing the modern working class Brit than in other films, such as The Full Monty, and while the ending is victorious, the band members themselves face a frightening time of change and challenge. Supporting cast performances are very fine and believable and not everyone in the story is a nice or likeable person, sort of like real people. Unfortunately, your sympathies for the miners are undermined by a cheesy romantic subplot, featuring ingenues Tara Fitzgerald and Ewan McGregor, in which the miners are portrayed as a bunch of insensitive male chauvinists. Cinematically, this transcends its made-for-TV genre. There is a striking scene of miners leaving the colliery, reflected in the shallow pools of a recent rain, while the band plays at a competition off-screen. While this story does not reach the tragic depths of other miner vs owner tales, 'Matewan' for example, it does intelligently deal with the issues facing today's mining industry. The music is excellent and adds just the right note to this very entertaining and thought-provoking story. On the technical side, I found the sound quality of the VHS to be uneven and had to constantly adjust the volume to hear the dialogue clearly.
Rating: 
Summary: Exceptional music and a great story
Review: This is a fine movie with a great soundtrack. Enjoy it in digital sound on your DVD player...then buy the soundtrack for your own listening pleasure. Most strikingly pleasurable is the story of this small town, being downsized (rendundancy in Britain) and the lives of hard working lugs who just try to make ends meet. Further, it is a great study in contrast as one might try and see how a different, although similar, culture deals with family, work, labor unions and the issues associated with that, every day. Great plot will keep the interest of most, and had this been better promoted, more folks would have enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and bitter. One of the best ever
Review: One of the best ever films to show the life of the workingclass in England. This has everything: It's funny, it's real, it'sbitter and sad, it's pure and simple. The people are not the beautiful people you can see on the cover, but rather a bitter woman who hits her unemployed fat and cute husband. Don't let the cover mislead you. It's much much better.
Rating:
Summary: That *cover* !
Review: My girlfriend and I just watched Brassed Off-- okay, surprise, we both loved it, but I think you could probably sue under the Trade Descriptions Act if you judged that film by the cover on the American release DVD. I mean, Ewan Macgregor and Tara Fitzgerald are never ever seen looking like that in the film! Are they trying to make it look like some cheapy romantic comedy or something? It's just nowhere near! For the record, the British cover features Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald, Ewan McGregor and Stephen Tompkinson in a sortof a collage. A bit more ambiguous. They don't try to make Ms. Fitzgerald look like Jennifer Anniston. Okay, rant over. Buy it, enjoy it :-)
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: What a shame eh. No "Ehh up lad, am going t'pit, but fetch us whippet furst", comic northern English working class stereotypes, but a moving portrayal of social desperation.Try living in one of England's former mining towns before you complain of Brassed Off's political content. Instead of some fatuous, feel good, pap, we have a highly entertaining, wonderfully acted, and moving film that has the nerve to carry a message about how ruthless and uncaring, dictatorial politics affect ordinary people. I realise the USA has a major problem with political subtlety beyond clear cut right wing theory. Thatcher's politics have systematically enriched the SE of England at the expense of much of the rest of the country. Just say this - she is not a 'favourite' personality for many people outside of London and the commuter belts. The 1984 miners' strike which saw violence on both sides, has left a long, a very bitter legacy. PS. Profitable coal pits closed en masse; now the UK imports poorer quality coal from outside. Politics of regeneration?
Rating:
Summary: A moving story, slightly marred by overt political attacks
Review: An excellent combination of comedy and gritty story telling as focusing on the fortunes of a colliery band as the fight to saved their pit from closure. Pete Postlethwaite shines as the bandleader (more evidence that the film industry should spend more time on veterans than young stars) and he's given strong support from the ever-excellent McGregor, Tompkinson and Fitzgerald. But where as The Full Monty was a feel good tale of workers overcoming the loss of their jobs, Brassed Off is far more downbeat and gritty as the miners cling to what remains of their way of life. Director Mark Herman tells his story convincing with the exception of Tompkinson's attack on Margaret Thatcher. It has to be said that this was totally inappropriate in a fictional story and unnecessary, since the film was already providing an effective comment on the Conservative mining policy of the 1980s, similar to the way that Ken Loach's Kes commented the state education of the 1960s. However this is a fairly minor flaw that does not spoil a film, which is compulsive, funny and moving.
Rating:
Summary: This movie speaks to all of us amateur musicians . . .
Review: So, why do we do it? We devote our meager free time to the pursuit of musical excellence, many of us in amateur brass bands, string orchestras, community choirs and the like -- for what purpose? Because we MUST. No matter how dismal or depressed the rest of our lives are, there's always an opportunity to create something beautiful, something truly magnificent, by combining our talents with those of others. The Grimley Colliery Band is but one example of this. Each member, all men but one newcomer, is facing a crisis -- the closing of the coal mine into which they've poured their sweat and energy for most of their lives, and the uncertain future to follow. Their director, Danny, demanding and hard-headed, has retired from the mine, and doesn't seem to grasp the seriousness of the matter. "Music is EVERYTHING!" he proclaims. The members consider him daft, as they struggle to balance family, the impending union/management show-down, and finances. It's only at a moment of crisis that they realize the point: Danny not only understands the situation, but he also knows that MUSIC is the only thing that will get these proud men through the storm together, whole and with some shred of self-respect. Pete Postlethwaite is brilliant as Danny; Tara Fitzgerald's understated performance as Gloria, the only female member of the band, gives her character a sense of integrity and honor that could easily have been overlooked in favor of more "marketable" characteristics. The rest of the cast is remarkable. Particularly notable is Stephen Tompkinson as Phil, Danny's son, whose descent into abject depression seems to mirror the daily descent into the black hole of the coal mine -- dark, dirty, and dangerous. I liked this movie far better than I thought I would when I saw the cover of the DVD. This is less a romance than an examination of many lives made complete -- by music, by the pursuit of beauty and grace, by focused cooperation. It really doesn't get any better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Quite OK
Review: Not unlike »The Full Monty«, »Brassed Off« is a movie about a coal pit in the UK that is closed by the government, and therefore, the entire existence of not only the miners but the very town of Grimley is threatened. The only thing the mineworkers can stick to, is their brass orchestra. This provides joy, tears, strength, pain, love, conflicts... and eventually challenges the solidarity between the people involved. An interesting and well-made British movie of social realism, once again.
Rating:
Summary: For Lovers of Left Wing Politics, and/or Brass Bands
Review: It is not surprising that the American marketing blurbs found on the cover of the DVD, and during the advertising accompanying the US theatrical release had nothing to do with the actual movie. The movie juxtaposed two themes which would be poison at the US box office--political commentary (actually a shrill and irrational attack on the economic policies which restored England to economic health) and the joys of community bands. This movie is greatly beloved by amatuer musicians, and presumably also by extreme leftists. The reality is the movie is a beautifully contrived story, with plenty of human emotion, interesting characters which we really come to care about, and lots of terrific band music. For an old bandy like me, the music really makes the movie, and it will go to the head of the list of great band movies, including: The Stars and Stripes Forever (the only Hollywood movie where the tuba player gets the beautiful girl) The Music Man Mr Holland's Opus
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