Tim Roth's PFA-screen debut was memorable as a nebbish robbed of personality and hope in Mike Leigh's Meantime. But he literally burst onto the English scene in Made in Britain, where he has more personality than the screen or any of its personages can handle. He is Trevor, a skinhead with a swastika tattoo between the eyes and a very prominent ax to grind. Going from unemployment office to halfway house on the road to a lock-up, Trevor is a wild animal, pacing, pacing. Everything is now, nothing is later; everything real, nothing symbolic for Trevor: he despises something, he pisses on it. Clever Trevor: he knows there is no future. Precisely by loving its hate-filled protagonist, by thriving on his energy, Made in Britain willfully traps us in contradiction. David Thomson put it best: "The kid, Trevor, is...so lively, so fuck-off eloquent, so much Tim Roth, that we are left to ponder whether such cases are hopeless or does society need to go back to zero." Like Scum, Made in Britain sadly points to childhood itself as a prison: it only works if you behave.