DVD Review: Green Street Hooligans

By Frankie Dees Jul 1, 2006, 23:48 GMT

Unjustly expelled from Harvard when a stash of cocaine is found in his possession, Matt (Elijah Wood) moves to London to live with his sister and her husband Steve (Marc Warren.) He is quickly introduced to Steve\'s chirpy, cock-sure younger brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam.) Initially, Pete is reluctant to get acquainted with Matt and allow him to tread around the capital city with him because he may be seen by ...more

“I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles!”

So is the unlikely theme song of the GSH, a firm that represents the West Ham United Football squad (“don’t dare call it soccer”). A firm is an organized gang of supporters who rally behind their favorite football squad through provocation of fights with opposing firms in bare-fisted, unrelenting street fights all the more vicious because they never resort to guns in this adrenaline-fueled entertainment that recalls Fight Club, The Warriors and The Outsiders.

The movie shows us, however, that these firms do not consist of the dregs of society but normal, everyday people. P.E. teachers, pilots, fathers and husbands who all conform during the week, but then let loose around match time. Conformity and a release through violence is not a new message, of course, as Fight Club hammered that point home (quite literally) back in 1999 in which this film bears a lot of similarities but this film is a much more straight-forward telling of that message, without all the flash, and that the film was the result of Director Lexi Alexander, a German woman and former Kickboxing champion, actually experiencing this kind of violence and rivalry in Germany growing up gives it that added bit of realism.

We see this world for the first time through the eyes of a “yank,” Matt Buckner (an interestingly cast Elijah Wood), the son of a prominent journalist, who is expelled from Harvard two months before graduating after agreeing to take the fall for his roommate when some cocaine is found in their room. His roommate (“he’s a Van Holden”) is the son of a powerful politician so Buckner doesn’t even try to struggle.

Matt’s father is constantly on away on assignment and never reachable, so Matt takes this opportunity to visit his sister Shannon (Claire Forlani, Mystery Men) in England. Once there, we meet her husband Steve (Marc Warren, Band of Brothers), a nice man and a noticeably former roughneck who went professional for the sake of his family. Steve’s brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam, Cold Mountain) storms in who is very much still a roughneck. Steve takes Matt to the side to tell him about some romantic plans they set aside for the night, so Steve bribes Pete into taking Matt to the football game for a little pint money and so begins Matt’s spiral (downwards or upwards would be on your perspective) into a completely different world.

There are only two things that come off worse than a yank in a firm and that is cops and journalists. So says Pete to Matt as his justification for taking half the money and ditching him. Showing up at the firm’s pub hang-out with a yank would not be a great move. But when Matt refuses to give Pete half the money (Steve gave Matt the money and told him not to let Pete have it) and embarrassingly fights back, Pete sees something he likes, a spark maybe, and decides to let him join him.

What he joins in with, what he’s not quite aware of at first, is the GSE, the Green Street Hooligans, and Pete is the head of the firm which is why Matt is begrudgingly, well… if not accepted then tolerated by the other members who all seem fairly genial except for Bovver (Leo Gregory) who seems to have it out for Matt from the start. After the football match, Pete sends Matt on his way home by himself only to get jumped by a rival firm. Caught only long enough to receive a “Chelsea grin” (don’t ask), Pete and the firm show up to rescue him in a sequence that shows Matt’s first eye-opener to the world of “football hooliganism.”

When larger numbers show up from the rival firm and their extremely out-numbered, Matt poses the question of getting the hell out of there to Pete but with a firm, the ground is always stood no matter what. As Matt stares into the yelling, contorted faces of the rival firm who stand at the opposite end of a brick-laden alleyway straight out of West Side Story, he is faced with two choices: fight or flight.

As the GSE rush in at the intimidating numbers of the rival firm, there is a slight hesitation on Matt’s part but then he joins in on the attack. Blood is spilled and bones are cracked but the GSE fights them off and Matt bloody and bruised managed to get in a few hits himself (due to one of my favorite little techniques I like to call the “windmill”). That he stood and fought gained him a enormous amount of respect among the GSE (even if that first punch was a “bit gay”) and he finds himself moving in with Pete, who is a P.E. and History teacher during the week to pay the bills.

As the film continues, the progression of the plot fills out. It seems the GSE was once the most respected of all the firms due to the almost mythical involvement of The Major, the former head of the GSE and a legendary fighter and decision-maker. GSE’s main rival was with Millwall, headed by the savage Tommy Hatcher, and when a 12-year old boy is killed in one of their infamous scraps, matches between the two teams have not been scheduled since.

The climax of the film will revolve around the long-awaited battle between GSE and Millwall as well as the return of The Major who finds himself on the particularly savage end of Tommy Hatcher’s vengeance who blames The Major for a major domestic disturbance. All the while, Bovver tries to expose Matt as an undercover journalist to Pete who comes under some major heat as the head of a firm who not only let a yank in their midst but possibly an undercover journo as well.

Lexi Alexander who co-wrote the screenplay with Dougie Brimson and Joshua Sheldy builds the tension reasonably well during the first two-thirds of the film but as the film closes in on the climax, you can start to feel the weight of some of the more standard elements of the narrative such as the age-old revenge/forgiveness plot and a lot of the twists are fairly predictable for anyone with an ounce of intuitiveness yet the script is still well-crafted and you find yourself easily going along for the ride even if nothing quite blindsides you.

A lot of people thought it strange for Elijah Wood to be cast in this type of role, but I thought it was perfect casting and concretes the point the film was trying to make – that even a well-educated, nerdy guy can get caught up in the liveliness of violence through loyalty, camaraderie and that need to make a connection. Charlie Hunnam as Pete is a very charismatic heavy and the film is filled with great cockney faces such as Geoff Bell who shows up later in the film as Tommy Hatcher, a ruthless middle-aged man consumed by the idea of vengeance.

The film is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen and is enhanced for widescreen televisions. Meager special features include a six-minute featurette “Making of Hooligans” that include brief interviews with Elijah Wood and Director Lexi Alexander and a music video for Terence Jay’s “One Blood.” Oh, Joy!

‘Green Street Hooligans’ is a pretty nasty and brutal look into a world unbeknownst to the majority of America and while I’m sure some of these elements are exaggerated (reviews in the UK are less than enthusiastic), this still taps into some very real points about violence in men and the need for connection as well as conforming to a mob mentality.

The cast does a great job and Lexi Alexander along with her cinematographer Alexander Buono utilize great locations and atmosphere here to fashion an effective, blood-letting action film with some nice thematic undercurrents.

Green Street Hooligans is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK. Visit the DVD database for more information.