Brassed Off

Director/Writer:	Mark Herman
Director of Photography:	Andy Collins
Editor:	Mike Ellis
Music:	Trevor Jones
Production Designer:	Don Taylor
Producer:	Steve Abbott
	Miramax; R; 107 minutes
Release:	5/97
Cast:	Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald, Ewan McGregor and Stephen Tompkinson

Brassed Off Sophie Baker/Miramax

Though contrived and maudlin, Brassed Off offers some knee-slapping laughs and a pointed commentary on a Thatcherite policy that threw scores of coal miners out of work. The folks in Grimley, a fictional British coal-mining town in 1992, are justifiably aroused that their town is a target of the government's pit-closure program. The town's pride, the Grimley Colliery Brass Band, holds the community together and lifts its spirits in the face of desolation. Postlethwaite gives an in-your-face, passionate performance as the bandleader stricken with black-lung disease.