The Football Factory

Football Factory does not shamelessly glorify violence like many have said. Violence is obviously a focal part of the movie, but i feel the violence of this movie is shown in a negative light. Through out the movie football hooligans of Chelsea FC are followed in a number of different situations. The turf of other football firms, and the local pubs are where many of the scenes are shot, but despite following the violence of football hooligans, this film is a lot deeper than that. It is about trying to feel a part of something. It is about confused individuals that are looking for something to believe in, and throughout the movie there are internal struggles where the characters battle within their own minds as to what's more important; growing up, or football hooliganism. The violence in this movie isn't gratuitous. It is necessary and factual, and is needed to show the internal struggles of the movies' many confused individuals. Not a bad film, although it is a little rough around the edges.

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.

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.

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!)

I read a review of The Football Factory that said the characters are so "orrible" and "hateful" it was impossible to like them at all! You have to think that that particular reviewer knows nothing about the subject matter of the film he was writing about. Does he think that hoards of footie hooligans, who delight in knocking seven bells of tar out of each other, want to be liked?

The Football Factory is directed by Nick Love and based on the book of the same name written by John King. It stars Danny Dyer {who else really?}, Frank Harper, Neil Maskell and Tamer Hassan {Hassan fans should note he's rarely in it tho}. The story is about what was termed The English Disease, a disease where like minded adults from various walks of life, religiously took to fighting like minded adults, in the name of what football team they happened to support. There's been a ream of books written on the subject, from those involved and by those who haven't a clue outside of reading their Sunday Times articles back in the day. There's also been one or two films about the subject, from pretty ace efforts like Phillip Davis' ID, to middling tellings such as Elijah Wood starrer Green Street. It's a subject that people seem hell bent on dissecting and attempting to get to the bottom of.

So with that in mind, Love's movie is something of a triumph in that it tries the hardest to understand its topic. To those on the outside of football hooliganism, it looks like a bunch of blokes mindlessly inflicting harm on each other whilst simultaneously damaging the good name of the national sport. But Love, with help from King's source, explores ego led tribalism, male bonding, male conformity and dissatisfaction of life in general. Throw in the punches and a ream of genuine laughs and you got a film that is easy to like if you belong to a certain demographic. Here is the problem if you are not a geezer, a tribal footie fan or a mindless thug, The Football Factory holds no appeal to the casual observer, which is a shame, because as stated previously, it's trying hard to reason and understand. There's for instance a cracking plot-strand involving two old fella's, Tommy's {Dyer} granddad Bill {Dudley Sutton} & Albert {John Junkin}. Both lifelong pals who have grown tired of what "their" Britain has become, thus they are in the process of emigrating to Australia. This dovetails smartly with the unfolding story of football violence perpetrated by the kids of the day. Generational differences? Perhaps, maybe?

The cast are strong, either fitting the mean profile perfectly {Harper/Hassan} or delivering the needed cocky swagger line {Dyer}, Love has assembled, what is for the material at hand, the perfect cast. OK we probably could have done with Vinnie Jones or Ross Kemp in there somewhere, but it's a low budget movie you know!. The fight scenes are grim and look authentic and the soundtrack rocks the large one too. So is it glamorising a touchy subject? Well yes it is, if you are a football hooligan yourself that is. It's not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but it has good intentions in there, even if not all of them are fully realised. To which it leaves us with an impacting, intriguing and uneasily enjoyable movie. 7.5/10