The Football Factory

Football violence is a horrible thing. Period. What "The football factory" shows us is a bit of reasoning behind why, seemingly normal go out and beat the crap out of each other because of a game with 22 guys and a ball. The truth is, it has nothing to do with the game. How the team actually does really doesn't matter, as long as you get to play your rivals because it's about togetherness and escaping the dreariness of everyday life. In a sick a twisted way of course, but it's the only way for these guys. The movie itself goes by at a million miles an hour and gives us characters that seem both believable and real, and a really touching story of a friendship that has lasted through the ages. The main character Tommy is a really interesting one: He knows he's on the path to destruction and through visions of his own demise, he realizes that it's all going to hell and that he (along with the other hang-arounds) are along for the ride. It's a movie that is definitely worth an hour and a half of your time and you Americans should praise yourself lucky that at least you got one thing right: You know how to behave at sporting events (hell, at NFL games they have barbecues out in the parking lot where fans of the opposing teams eat and hang out together. Just imagine that at a Tottenham-Chelsea or Roma-Lazio game!)

The hooligan culture is and never was a class thing, people from all walks of life participated, from local council flat drug users to people with well paid office and professional jobs to ex-army types on a very nice pension. This film shows that in true fashion.

Whilst I never took part in any of that crap I have met, seen and known many who have in my time, most are fairly normal people away from all that, in fact I knew one guy for over a year before I found out that after standing on the terraces with the rest of us on a Saturday afternoon he used to go and get pissed, filled up with E's and go on a rampage with his other mates in other nearby towns looking for Cardiff City supporters.

This film is a fairly accurate reflection on the type and mix of people who became hooligans in the first place, especially poignant is the guy who got away from it all, made something half decent of himself and puts it down to simply growing up. Most of the people I have seen in the past are like that, the ones who aren't tend to be those who were put away before they got to that maturing stage, and I'm not talking about end of puberty maturing I'm talking about the day you wake up and think to yourself is this really going to be the rest of my life kind of maturing.

Full marks to all involved for not taking the easy way out and producing a sack full of morally correct/incorrect bullcrap and instead giving a realistic insight into a very scary world.

Yes the film does not really flow or have a connected plot line, but then it isn't meant to, it is meant to be a film about real life, real life does not have a set up stage, middle bit and happy conclusion. In fact this film could probably loop around for another few years of Tommy's life before he either ends up in jail or shakes himself out into the happy ending scenario that I'm sure many were expecting all along.

The film is at times brutal, unsubtle and the language is extremely tasteless, however these are all thing you would have seen in that reality and it is to the credit of the makers and actors that this did not bog the film down at all. Every scene had a purpose no matter how obscure it may have seen at the first watching.

At every scene from about 10 minutes in I felt emotionally involved in a way that not many films manage to do to me, I actually had empathy for these people if not sympathy, I could se how they could get pleasure from the things that they do even if they turn my own stomach to think of anyone I really care about being involved in them.

Even today in what is a golden age of film making (and don't let any stuck up critic tell you it is not) very few films really make you feel connected to the characters in this way, films like Trainspotting, Twin Town, Human Traffic and now Football Factory are a very unusual thing and seem to be specific to the British film industry right at the moment. Maybe it's just I am personally more able to relate to them having grown up around such cultures, I don't know, I just know that I am glad I bought this film and would recommend anyone watch it if only for a better understanding of the culture at that time, something I am proud to say we have made huge strides to eradicate in this country.

Hoologanism in football has been an controversial over past decade or so especially with it is concerned with English fans. This film has presented this dilemma quite well and in style as most British films do these days. Danny Dyer is brilliant, the last film i saw him in was Human Traffic. There is some terrific dialogue in this film... definitely one of the better football films to be released. I never knew Dyer voiced in some GTA games, how interesting. This film takes on no real plot (except for Chelsea's fixture list) which didn't really bother because it reflects a culture not a 'storyline'. British films never cease to amaze me, the acting is brilliant and script are always so clever and hilarious.

Although the film was good, it scared the hell out of me at times... the reality of it. Watching and thinking that this really does happen every weekend, I guess that is the intention of Nick Love. As a football fan and someone who has never experienced the full wrath of football hooliganism, i throroughly enjoyed and recommend it to anyone who is wondering whether to watch it or not.

MY VERDICT: **/*****

The logic resulting in the production of this film is not hard to follow. The scathing social satire and searingly counter-cultural Trainspotting was a brilliant British film. The flash-talking, fast-plotted, gun-wielding, hard-brawling Lock Stock was a good British film. So why not combine aspects of both? Predictably, the result is a mess, but flashes of good film-making keep the viewer interested for the 1 hour and 20 minutes or so of football 'n' fights.

The opening sequence closely follows the Trainspotting format. A narrator, later we discover called Tommy, delivers his criticism on how we live our lives and how he has found excitement and meaning by flying right off the rails. The soundtrack moves from one Brit hit to the next as we are introduced to his gang in some snappy montages. Again, the Trainspotting skool of film-making isn't so much an influence as a screenplay, storyboard and script.

Soon, we get to know the gang, and learn that the love of their lives is violence, especially (but not exclusively) surrounding their football team, Chelsea, and particularly focused against their arch-rivals Millwall. I was preparing myself for some gruesome violence as geezers started drinking pints and looking for a fight. And then, the film ... just ... chickens out. A film which is supposedly about football violence should, um, contain some football violence maybe, but Football Factory becomes a film version of one of its thugs - all bluster and intimidation, and no bite. Supposedly hard-hitting action sequences have soap opera-like qualities. Never do we seem to see a fist connect in anger, or teeth shatter, or bones crack. Just some bad pantomime blood and incompetent camera-work. This inadequacy seriously undermines the film's impact - it fails to pump up the audience to the next big fight, and thus has no discernible pace. Just scenes, shots and cuts.

Instead, the focus of the film falls (rather disastrously) on the uninteresting, homogenous characters. With a sigh, I realized this wasn't going to get any better, and began to take mental notes of names, story lines etc so I could at least follow the plot. Tommy and Rod are the central duo, the thugs with brains, imagination, and perhaps the insight that will lift them out of this life. Bill is meant to be the ultra-nasty psycho - Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting was clearly what they were trying to emulate - but some unconvincing acting gives him all the terror of a particularly in-your-face door to door salesman. Zebedee is there for exposition on the cocaine-fuelled lifestyle that all youths supposedly lead (is this true? I was a teenager for years, and I never remember being offered cocaine.) There's also an organised violence ringleader, although I don't have to worry about his name because he brings absolutely nothing to the plot at all.

In brief, the plot follows the gang on the buildup to a particularly bruising clash - Millwall versus Chelsea, and particularly how Tommy begins to get cold feet about his thuggery and starts considering his options. This isn't helped by some heavy-handedly (almost bludgeoningly) symbolic dream sequences. I quite liked the film-making device of giving no warning or visual clues to as what was a dream and what wasn't. It's not put to an ultimate good use though, much like the rest of the handful or so of original ideas in the film. I like the dope-smoking old men though.

So is this worth viewing or not? Certainly, it's got more to chew on than another awful CGI-overkill-marathon like Van Helsing or Catwoman. But don't expect it to truly open your eyes to another world, or indeed, still be with you a month later.

"The Football Factory" is a Crime movie in which we watch football from a different perspective. Our main character is a male man who has a boring life. Although he is a hooligan and lives in a violent and hostile environment full of drugs and alcohol.

I liked this movie because I believe it shows the truth of football from the sight of hooligans. It shows the truth that no one wants to admit and believe that it exists. The interpretation of Danny Dyer who played as Tommy Johnson it was very good and also the interpretation of Frank Harper who played as Billy Bright.

Finally I have to say that I watched "The Football Factory" after I watched the "Green Street Hooligans" movie. So, unwittingly I made a comparison between these two movies and I believe that "Green Street Hooligans" is better. In my opinion you have to watch first "The Football Factory" and after the "Green Street Hooligans" because with this way you will be more satisfied.