Gary Stretch gives screen bullies a credible physical threat. We rate his contribution to Dead Man's Shoes, where the gang's grubby humour gives him more to work with, though the writing leaves Sonny too thinly understood.
Fi1m perspective
In Dead Man's Shoes (2004), the laughter around the gang is part of what makes it frightening. Gary Stretch plays its leader, Sonny, and brings a convincing threat to this small-time company. Alongside Stuart Wolfenden's Herbie, he helps establish people with a shared life before the revenge story begins to dominate. We felt uneasy at the gang's humour because we recognised the habit of laughing with whoever seems strongest.
Stretch moved into small film and television roles in the mid-1990s after a boxing career, and has frequently been cast as imposing, menacing figures. Wider notice came with Sonny for Shane Meadows and Cleitus in Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004). Stone used him again in World Trade Centre (2006) and Savages (2012). There was also a prominent part in the British crime thriller The Heavy (2010). The recurring demand for toughness is easy to understand; Dead Man's Shoes gives us a reason to ask for more than that.
Under Meadows, the useful quality is how readily Stretch fits into the gang's shabby comedy. Sonny has to be someone these men will spend time with, and an actor who merely threatened everyone would make that harder to believe. Stretch and the supporting cast help establish the pecking order without turning the group into interchangeable villains. That matters in a film carried by Paddy Considine's watchful fury: there have to be people around him worth paying attention to, even when we dislike them.
The limitation is in how little we learn about those people separately. Meadows sometimes relies on disgust to do the work of characterisation, and Sonny remains more convincing as part of the group than fully understood on his own. Stretch is worth watching here, but the thin writing and abrupt turns into brutality qualify our enthusiasm. Start with Dead Man's Shoes, without taking the gang's jokes as a promise of an easy evening.
Biography
Gary Stretch is a British actor. Prior to acting he had a professional boxing career, winning the British light-middleweight championship and the WBC International Super Welterweight title, and worked as a male model.
Stretch made his screen debut in 2004 as Sonny in Shane Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes, for which he received a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also appeared that year as Cleitus in Oliver Stone's Alexander. Subsequent film roles include World Trade Center (2006), Freebird (2008), The Heavy (2010) and Savages (2012).
