Hooligans

5 Stars; A truly great film, with a powerful story. Beautifully photographed, in London, Wow! The audience was quickly involved, and laughed, started, and gave a standing ovation at the end. Truly a complete film, thank you for having a real ending to the film, which is so rare these days. Never apologize for this film, it is loving, stark, caring, hard, honest, violent, and beautiful. It touches the emotions, and the feeling of not belonging that exists within many of us, and that longing for love and brotherhood, that is not available without some dire costs. The characters were so clearly human, powerful and conflicted one was drawn to care for everything that happened to them and cheer at their triumphs and sit in horror at their losses.

I have recommended that everyone see this film during SXSW. My wife and I were expecting an audience award for the film, which it easily won, however the Jury Award was also won and we were give true appreciation for the jury system at SXSW.

Beautiful photographed, with outstanding music, this production hits all the marks out of the ballpark and should be studied for how powerful film today could be. This is the level of film making I aspire to achieve.

Hopefully this film will not be limited in its reception as a "sport" film, and more disparagingly in America as a "soccer" film. It is much more than either distinction, for it portrays the transformational awakening of a young man as he becomes proactive rather than reactive about life.

This transition occurs within the often misunderstood culture of "football hooligans", hordes of zealous football fans who display a jingoistic allegiance to their teams and the locale from which they hail. The insight provided into this world reveals more than gang triviality for these men do not compete for the sake of criminal enterprise or the carnal spoils of women. Their skirmishes, often times brutal, are for stake in a sense of pride that reminds us that athletes put glory in our sport, but for some fans, glory is the sport. That pride, as it is conveyed, does well to offset the characterization of drunken recklessness that could easily be assessed to "hooliganism".

I highly recommend this film --- it's not "soccer". It's awakening to self.

It has been interesting reading the comments here. It might be helpful to some, particularly our American and Canadian cousins, to have a little background information on the West Ham following over the years.

For some years (approx. 1967 - 1985) and before I realised the error of my ways and retired I was an active member of the West Ham mob, which was made up of several different firms from around the East End and parts of Essex. The main ones being the Mile End ('67 to around '74) and the TBF ('70's & '80's). The ICF got going around 1978 and carried through to the '90's. It was more of an umbrella name given to the combined firms who all came together for the away games. The West Ham mob consisted of between 300 to 400 individuals. The ranks would sometimes be swelled by several hundred regular supporters, so called scarfers (non violent). Often, particularly mid week matches up north, there could be significantly less. It would not be unusual to find oneself on a freezing cold terrace for a night game mid winter only 30-40 handed and outnumbered by a hostile opposition 20-1. It made for some hair raising experiences, particularly trying to navigate back to the railway station after the game through some pretty hostile unfamiliar back streets. West Ham always had a reputation for sticking together and never leaving anyone behind. There were some fearless individuals who held the line no matter the odds and the expectation was that everyone would stand with them. You earned respect by not bottling out, even if you were not much of a scrapper and had legs like jelly.

Our traditional rivals have always been Millwall. Correctly depicted in the film. This rivalry goes back at least to the 1920's and is steeped in the history of the London Docklands. West Ham also have a particular aversion to Manchester United and Chelsea for differing reasons.

Any West Ham supporter who was there will tell you that the most violent clash ever at a football match involving the club, and there have been many over the years, was actually a friendly. A mid week testimonial game against Millwall at the old Den (Millwall's old stadium) in 1972. Fortunately the two clubs play in different leagues and therefore do not play each other much, no doubt to the great relief of the Metropolitan Police.

Now to the film, I was expecting I would not enjoy Green Street as I had been disappointed by all the other Hooli films that had gone before. However, despite a questionable story line and some glaring inaccuracies, including the abysmal accent of the lead character played by Charlie Hunnam, I quite liked it. One has to make allowances for the fact that this was fictional and not a documentary. I thought the acting was generally pretty good and the camera work was of a high standard.

I am afraid that the Elijah Wood character would not have made it into our firm in my day. He would have been politely pointed in the direction of the scarfers and told to tag along with them, not because he was an American, if he genuinely supported West Ham this would have been good enough for us, no it would have been because he would have been considered a liability and we would have had to assign someone to keep an eye on him.

Finally in the real world the GSE would never have been the top firm down at Upton Park. The age range was too narrow and physically they were too light weight compared to some of the real life characters who graced the West Side, the South Bank and the Chicken Run.

Irons!!!

First of all there hasn't been a good film about English Football Hooliganism. Both ID in 1995 and last years FOOTBALL FACTORY either failed to convince or just went down the familiar exploitative road of glamorising the buzz and thrill of violence.

HOOLIGANS as the title suggests depicts what these aforementioned films centre upon with the added value of having a story and characters you care about. There's no avoiding the cliché's as the ranks of these organised gang members are portrayed as gangsters.

Similar to BBC's Gary Oldman drama THE FIRM broadcast in 1986 it also show the characters as normal members of society, family men with respectable jobs. FOOTBALL FACTORY took the extreme and unconvincing scenario that these weekend animals are florist's during the week which might be amusing but the subject matter of organised territorial football hooliganism needs to be given a serious look at.

Fortunately HOOLIGANS portrays this more realistically, sure there's the stereo types in designer clothes (The Chavs) as we call them now where loyalty, respect, revenge, dignity and pride are what they live for, not the enjoyment of the actual sport. This simply acts as the excuse to fight in a traditional gang warfare environment. The prospect of West Ham's cup tie with Millwall brings joy to the faces of both sets of fans.

Casting Elijah Wood is a bold move, he looks like a Choirboy but this adds to the films main storyline of innocence corrupted. The acting is better than average, despite letting his cockney accent slip on occasions, Gang leader Charlie Hunnam shows a genuine mix of anger, aggression and compassion which holds the film together.

This won't win awards but it's refreshing to see a film finally tackling the subject matter that unfortunately has been a shameful factor of Britain's attitude towards football as we are constantly under threat of being disqualified from International tournaments due to the bad behaviour of soccer hooligans.

I saw this at a mystery preview screening where I didn't know what film was going to be shown. Sometimes these previews turn out to be real turkeys but thankfully that wasn't the case this time.

Without revealing too much of the story, Elijah Wood's character gets kicked out of Harvard for a drug offence he didn't commit. He flies to London to visit his sister and quickly gets caught up in a small group of West Ham United supporting hooligans called the Green Street Elite.

The film does slightly glamorise the violence, but ends on a moralising note. An engaging storyline, good cinematography and decent cast performances make this a very enjoyable film.

Two minor demerits: 1) Charlie Hunnam's "cor blimey guv'nor" accent owes more to Dick van Dyke than London's East End.

2) To establish that Wood's character has landed in London, we hear this frankly ridiculous message over the airport's PA system - "this is a security announcement at London Heathrow airport". Presumably this was inserted for the hard of thinking.

To all the Americans who have commented that they'd avoid British football matches as a result of this film, I point out that this film is fiction - not a documentary. Hooligans are an absolutely tiny minority of the crowd at a football match and even then they invariably only fight among themselves rather than randomly attacking innocent members of the public (something the film accurately portrayed).

All in all, an excellent film, worth going to see.