Review of Green Street Hooligans (2005) by Drew S — 27 Sep 2010

This movie is shockingly fucking stupid. It's almost serviceable as an anthropological capsule, because I really wanted to learn more about the firms, but according to actual members of firms it misrepresents them and paints them as far more violent than they actually are. I wouldn't exactly rush to believe them, as I could easily imagine football fans being a savage and reckless lot, but Green Street Hooligans is a nonstop celebration of their relentless idiocy. The violence is presented as brutal, sure, but is the movie's aim really to get us to tsk-tsk at the brutality? Of course not; it's frenetically paced and edited Bourne-style to try and amp us up as much as possible. The movie is a hotshot of testosterone first and a morality tale second, which isn't an approach that necessarily fails, except for Hooligans' woebegone attempts to redeem itself in the third act. The cliches, present in scattered bursts through the first two thirds, come roaring into play here. Cut and paste scriptwriting at its ugliest.

My problems with Green Street Hooligans could continue - perhaps the greatest of which is the casting of Elijah Wood, who's a great fit for his character's baby steps but just doesn't have the edge to suggest a transformation into someone rough or angry. Really, though, the movie is too boring to complain about. It's a hyper-typical loss of innocence tale interspersed with some dull stylized violence to lure us away from the incredibly simple moral messages. This will probably fly with an unjaded teenage boy or a football fan, but its niche success indicates its overall lack of appeal.