Green Street Hooligans (2005)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Harvard or whatever Ivy league college student ends up in London and joins the ICF or GSE in this case. It also happens to be Elijah Wood, which if your not giggling already, proves himself in the most stupid hooligans fight scene I've seen. There was some research, either a few well known books or talked to some known casuals. Pubs and train stations are the preferred ambush if no arena has been agreed. It seems like some Yank has seen this happening and made a film with US interest, which is why it fails, except on laughs.

Though arguably exaggerated for storytelling means, 'Green Street' captures the grimy, gritty and uncomfortable side to pre-match, post-game English football. Cinematography is deliberately shaky and unspectacular to emphasise this realistic approach; techniques which credibly make the film better and harder to look away as you delve into a violent underworld.Following an American Harvard drop-out (wrongly expelled for something he didn't do), Elijah Wood's protagonist travels to the UK to finally visit his sister. It isn't long before events lead him to awkwardly navigate football hooliganism and ingratiate himself in an ugly atmosphere filled with coarse language and ultra-violence thanks to Charlie Hunnam's family tie. Gradually becoming assimilated in a gang that perpetually uses coarse language, crude slang, and derogatory verbal abuse, we, as the viewer, also find ourselves trespassing in a world we don't belong (or at least shouldn't). But its brutal, bare-knuckle street fights between rival football club supporters/gangs isn't the main attraction even if that is the headlining snare to lure in movie-goers searching for a lurid experience behind the scenes of a football game. The story becomes front and centre as the second act closes and the third begins, Elijah's Wood's journalist history threatens new-found friendships, high-stakes drama looms with the threat of reveals and bloody history between the central gangs, and the film shows us humanity deep within even the most despicable of people who initially warrant little of our time as they waste theirs revelling in others misery. 'Green Street' is well-cast, toughly written, and solidly acted to tempt anyone just curious of the football hooliganism scene, even when you realise this horrible side to life is not for you, but getting out isn't as easy as just walking away. 8/10.

This is This Is England meets Fight Club. But it does not rise to the level of any of them. Probably the biggest production mistake is Elijah Wood. For the entire length of the movie every time he was appearing on screen I could not think anything but "Frodo!" and giggle. Even the exposed belly fat when he gets inked screams "Frodo!". So bottom line: this was a comedy for me.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

There must be something redeeming about British football, but I have yet to find it. Media representations, both factual and fictional, seem largely concerned with bad behavior by young (and not so young) males. (To be fair, male American football fans aren't a whole lot better, just less violent.} Elijah Wood portrays Matt, a young American student at Harvard who is falsely accused of drug-dealing and expelled. That plot gets lost early on, but it does get him to London, where he bunks with his sister (Claire Forlani, a Brit, herself playing an American), now married to a Brit. Her brother-in-law, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), a football hooligan, is also on the scene. He is delegated to help Matt adjust to life in London, an assignment Pete is initially not thrilled about. Events spiral downhill from there. Wood is well-cast as the straight arrow Harvard boy who (for whatever reason) takes the fall for his well-connected, politically ambitious, drug dealer roommate. He is thrust into the violent Hooligan culture of London and takes to it. Hunnam, who has been criticized for his accent, realizes that film is an international commodity, and English is the language of commercially successful films. Actors have to be understood everywhere, not just locally. Most of his mates don't get that, and it makes much of the dialogue problematic. Forlani is given little to do and does little with it. This could have been a brilliant film; Wood always has the potential to make his vehicles be so. But it does not achieve that goal, and British football is the culprit. It is hard to sympathize with anything which finds its inspiration in a sport typified by the unruly behavior of its advocates.