Brassed Off (1996)

★ 7.0 1h 47m 293 votes IMDb

A Yorkshire coal mine is threatened with closure and the only hope is for the men to enter their Grimley Colliery Brass Band into a national competition. They believe they have no hope until Gloria appears carrying her Flugelhorn. At first mocked for being a woman, she soon becomes the only chance for the band to win.

Brassed Off

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Cast

Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor as Andy Barrow Age 55 · Perth, Scotland, UK Ewan Gordon McGregor (born March 31, 1971) is a Scottish actor. His accolades include a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2013, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Emp...
Tara Fitzgerald
Tara Fitzgerald as Gloria Age 58 · Cuckfield, Sussex, England, UK Tara Anne Cassandra Fitzgerald (born 18 September 1967) is an English actress who has appeared in feature films, television, radio and the stage. Fitzgerald won the New York Drama Desk Award for Outst...
Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite as Danny Died 2011 · Warrington, Cheshire, England, UK Pete Postlethwaite (February 7, 1946 – January 2, 2011) was an English stage, film and television actor. After minor television appearances including in The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first succes...
Jim Carter
Jim Carter as Harry Age 77 · Harrogate, Yorkshire, England, UK James Edward Carter (born August 19, 1948) is an English actor. He is best known for his role in Downton Abbey (2010–2015) playing Mr Carson, a role that has earned him four nominations for the Primet...
Stephen Tompkinson
Stephen Tompkinson as Phil Age 60 · Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, England Stephen Phillip Tompkinson is an English actor, known for his television roles as Marcus in Chancer (1990), Damien Day in Drop the Dead Donkey (1990–1998), Father Peter Clifford in Ballykissangel (199...
Philip Jackson
Philip Jackson as Jim Age 77 · Retford, Nottinghamshire, England, UK Philip Jackson (born 18 June 1948) is an English actor, known for his many television and film roles, most notably as Chief Inspector Japp in the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot and as Abbo...

Audience Reviews

John Chard 9/10 Jun 28, 2014
Land of bloody hope and glory eh!

Grimley Colliery Brass Band has been going for nigh on a century, but as the town's colliery itself comes under threat of closure due to the drawn out miners strikes, so does the bands very own survival. Giving much relief to a very depressed area, the band are hoping to make the grand finals day at the Royal Albert Hall, could the arrival of Flugelhorn player, Gloria, be just what the band needs? Or is she merely the catalyst to something far more critical?

Brassed Off is the first of what I personally call the Magical British Trio, three films that perfectly portray the British sense of humour during dark depressing times of unemployment. The other two of course are The Full Monty (1997) and Billy Elliot (2000), of which Brassed Off is essentially an appetiser of sorts, the warm up act for the big hitters so to speak. Not to say that Brassed Off is not worthy to sit alongside those well received pictures (home and abroad as they say), it most certainly is, it's just that its blend of humour and strife doesn't find any easy ground, thus making it hard for the undiscerning viewer to be at ease at the right moments. It is in short, unsure of what it primarily wants to be. The humour does work well tho, but it's in the dramatic core of the miners strikes, and the affects they have on the denizens of this quaint colliery town, that Brassed Off truly works, with some scenes literally tugging away at the old heart strings. Then there be the music itself, The Grimethorpe Colliery Band {on whose real life story this film is based} provide the music for the soundtrack, and its most enjoyable, often stirring, and definitely poignant at crucial moments.

The cast are tremendous, Ewan McGregor and Tara Fitzgerald offer up splendid youthful heart, but they are playing second fiddle (or should that be third brass section?) to Pete Postlethwaite and Stephen Tompkinson. As father and son, Postlethwaite and Tompkinson give the film its deep emotional being, each driven by differing needs, Brassed Off's success rests with both men being able to hold the viewers attention from the get go. Tompkinson has made a very profitable and thriving career in British Television, and rightly so, but it remains criminal that he didn't go on and make more well known and profitable full length feature films after his fabulous turn here. Filmed in the ideal Northern English town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Brassed Off is a film that has evident problems, but to someone like me, a Brit who lived thru those depressing days under Margaret Thatcher's government, it's a film that I love for a myriad of reasons, one can only hope that one of those reasons strikes a chord with yourselves.

A completely biased 9/10 from me!
CinemaSerf 7/10 Aug 27, 2023
A touching drama of a declining mining community in Margaret Thatcher's Britain. Pete Postlethwaite is subtle but forceful in his portrayal of "Danny"; the leader of the Grimley Colliery Band - one of the traditional brass bands that usually accompanied each mine in the North of England, much a there is a choir usually associated with a Welsh one. The story marries the inevitability of the mine closure with the impact on family and relationships throughout this close knit community and uses their band rehearsals as the axis for the plot. Tara Fitzgerald, Ewan McGregor, Philip Jackson and Jim Carter all contribute genuinely to this frequently dryly-humoured ensemble effort and by the end we are all too familiar with Rodrigo's "Concerto de Orange Juice".

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