In existence for a hundred years, Grimley Colliery Brass band is as old as the mine. But the miners are now deciding whether to fight to keep the pit open, and the future for town and band looks bleak. Although the arrival of flugelhorn player Gloria injects some life into the players, and bandleader Danny continues to exhort them to continue in the national competition, frictions and pressures are all too evident. And who's side is Gloria actually on?

Take The Full Monty, add a sharper emotional edge and replace the strutting strippers with a dignified British band. That's the essence of Brassed Off, a bittersweet gem released in 1996, a year before its more popular (and Oscar-nominated) counterpart. In the Yorkshire town of Grimley, there has always been a coal mine, just as for the last 111 years there has been a brass band and it seems that Danny (the wondrous Pete Postlethwaite) has been the director for every one of those years. Tory economic policies, however, are closing coal mines around the country in favour of nuclear power and Grimley appears to be next on the list. Danny is unfazed by the threat, claiming, "It's music that matters." But some of the men are about to quit the band until the appearance of Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald at her most radiant), who dazzles the all-male group (including old flame Andy, played by Ewan McGregor) first with her beauty, then with her flügelhorn playing. The new member gives the band a boost as they continue to perform and compete but closure remains very real, as director Mark Herman (Little Voice) accompanies the band's performances (played with gusto by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band) with scenes of angry labour- management confrontations and family strife. In this context, some of the characters claim that the music is an irresponsible form of escapism. It becomes clear, however, from a touching performance of "Danny Boy" to the stirring conclusion at Royal Albert Hall, that music is an expression of the human spirit, a bit of beauty and sanity in a harsh world. With defiance, the band can play "Land of Hope and Glory" even when the land offers them neither. --David Horiuchi

The central image in ``Brassed Off'' is that of a face: shiny, homely, dead serious. It is the face of a man who earnestly believes he is doing the most important thing in the world. The man's name is Danny, and he is the leader of a brass band made up of coal miners who work at a pit in Grimley, a Yorkshire mining town. The band was founded in 1881, and its rehearsal room is lined with the photographs of past bandmasters, looking down sternly on the current generation of musicians. It is 1992, and the colliery is about to be closed. The Conservative government made a decision some years earlier to replace coal with nuclear power as a source of fuel, and as a result some 140 pits, representing more than 200,000 miners' jobs, were declared redundant. The closure of a pit means the death of a town, because a village like Grimley depends entirely on the wages of the miners, whose families for generations have gone down in the mines--and played in the band. ``Brassed Off'' is a film that views the survival of the town through the survival of the band, and the survival of the band through the eyes of Danny (Pete Postlethwaite), who in some corner of his mind probably believes the mines exist only to supply him with musicians. The movie makes liberal use of storytelling formulas (there is a love story involving young people, and a crisis involving a married couple, and a health crisis involving Danny, a strategic use of ``Danny Boy,'' and a national band contest at the Royal Albert Hall). But Postlethwaite's performance elevates and even ennobles this material. He loves music. He is stern and exacting about it. His band members may labor in the pits all day, but when they come to rehearsal he expects seriousness and concentration. There is a 14-town competition coming up, and then the national finals, and this year he thinks the Grimley Brass Band has a real chance. If the pit closes, it will be a last chance. Into the rehearsal hall one day comes a pretty young woman named Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald), who asks if she can sit in with her flugelhorn. She can. Her late grandfather had been the band's best flugelhorn player, and her performance of ``Rodrigo's Concerto'' brings tears to the eyes of some of the band members--and a sparkle to the eye of young Andy (Ewan McGregor, from ``Trainspotting''), who had a crush on her in school. Now she has gone away to London, and returned to Grimley (we learn) to make a study about the pit closure. She pretends to have forgotten Andy, but later admits, ``I did know your name--I just didn't want you to think it was etched forever on my brain.'' The love they felt when they were 14 blossoms again, until it is revealed that she is working for the other side--for the government agency that would close the mine. She protests that she is on the miners' side, and that her study might save the pit, but is told scornfully, ``It's just a bloody PR exercise.. They've already made their decision while you were at bloody college.'' Another important figure the story is Phil (Stephen Tompkinson), Danny's son, who struggles to make ends meet for his wife and large family. He wants to quit the band in order to save paying the dues, but lacks the nerve to tell his father. Phil moonlights as Chuckles the Clown, and brings a quick end to a children's birthday party with an uncontrolled outburst against Margaret Thatcher. ``Brassed Off'' is a sweet film with a lot of anger at its core. The writer and director, Mark Herman, obviously believes the Tory energy decisions were inspired by the fact that coal miners voted Labour while nuclear power barons were Conservative. His plot tugs at every possible heartstring as it leads up to a dramatic moment in the Royal Albert Hall, which I will not reveal; it includes a speech against Thatcherism that some British critics found inappropriate, although it's certainly in character for old Danny. One of the movie's great pleasures is the music itself. Brass bands are maintained by many different British institutions--schools, police forces, military units, coal miners, assembly-line workers--and their crisp music always seems gloriously self-confident. Some of the film's best shots show Pete Postlethwaite's face as he leads the band: his anger when members get drunk and miss notes, and his pride when everything is exactly right. Acting is not accomplished only with words and emotion. Sometimes it is projected from within, into a stance or an expression. There is not a moment in ``Brassed Off'' when I did not believe Postlethwaite was a brass band leader--and a bloody good one. --Roger Ebert

The recent near-expurgation of Tories from British political life may take some of the wind out of "Brassed Off," a very earnest David vs. Goliath tale that also pitches art vs. livelihood and Margaret Thatcher vs. the rest of humanity. But not to worry. It's got plenty of wind to spare. Written and directed by Mark Herman--last seen perpetrating the Bronson Pinchot comedy "Blame It on the Bellboy"--"Brassed Off" takes place in the aptly named town of Grimley, where the Thatcher government is preparing to close the local coal mine. This will effectively render the town obsolete, its people unemployable, its families torn asunder and the local brass band defunct--not necessarily in that order. To the band's conductor, Danny (Pete Postlethwaite), the Grimley Colliery Band is not just the town's major concern, it's the only concern. Oblivious to the upcoming "redundancy" vote in which the town's miners will decide whether to keep the colliery open or take a government buyout, Danny is intent on taking the band to the national finals at Albert Hall, even as his players--including his son Phil (Stephen Tompkinson)--are busy watching their world collapse. Postlethwaite is terrifically moving and "Brassed Off" is his movie, even if Andy and Gloria--played by Ewan McGregor ("Trainspotting," "Emma") and Tara Fitzgerald ("Hear My Song," "Sirens," "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill . . .")--dominate the action as each other's love interest. They are fine, and fine together, despite their mini-crisis. Gloria, unbeknownst to anyone in town, works for the British Coal Board, which poses obvious problems for miner and horn player Andy. But it's Postlethwaite's Danny who represents all the movie's key themes: the self-absorption of art, the art of self-absorption and the Nero-esque disposition of a British public whose industry is being kicked out from under it. The difficulty is that "Brassed Off" operates at an emotional pitch that starts at a crescendo and never relents--rendering almost everything equally inconsequential. When local-girl-made-good Gloria adds her fluegelhorn to the colliery band--playing an excerpt from Roderigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" as if she were conservatory-trained--we have an emotional peak. When the band plays "Danny Boy" outside Danny's hospital room--"black lung" having laid him low--we have another (given that the group can make a 12-by-20 room sound like Carnegie Hall, the question becomes: If not mining, why not a world tour?). When Andy plays pool to redeem his horn from a local hustler and thus make the trip to the finals, we have one more irresistible catharsis. And at the end, there are so many emotional peaks you might feel like one of Thatcher's miners--manipulated, misled and maneuvered into an emotional corner. Sloppily dubbed (to avoid moments of troublesome dialect) and equally sentimental, "Brassed Off" provides a colorful cast of characters, but its tone is never as casual as it should be. The vulgarity is too deliberate, the jokes too forced. This kind of thing has been done well, of course, but not necessarily here. --JOHN ANDERSON

Nominated: Best Foreign Film

Nominated: Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film; Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music; Best Screenplay - Original

Won: Best Foreign Film

Won: Emden Film Award

Won: Peter Sellers Award for Comedy

Won: Best Foreign Film

Nominated: Best Foreign Film

Won: Grand Prix

Won: Special Jury Prize

Won: Film - Screenplay