Green Street Hooligans Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)October 1st, 2005
GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS, an energetic mix of FIGHT CLUB's adoration of violence and WEST SIDE STORY's popularization of gang warfare, takes American viewers into the world of British soccer hooligans. These thuggish gangs aren't well understood on this side of the Atlantic. As we get to know them in Lexi Alexander's film, the lads become frightfully easy to understand -- their motives, that is, not their accents. By pulverizing the other team's hooligans they get the same intense rush that others look for in drugs.
In order to make the story more palatable to U.S. audiences, we see it all through the eyes of little Frodo, I mean Elijah Wood as Matt Buckner. Without enough backbone to speak up for himself, Matt has been kicked out of Harvard, just two weeks before graduation. It was actually his roommate, the son of a senator, whose drugs were found in their room. Matt has gone to visit with his sister, Shannon Dunham (Claire Forlani), in London.
While living briefly in hooligan land, Matt gets accepted as a member of a "firm" named the Greet Street Elites (GSE). These firms (think gangs) are filled with guys with average jobs by day who go and fight other firms on the weekends during soccer season. Usually only fists used, but sometimes people do die. (The British apparently possess teeth made of steel, since no matter how much blood is spilt, teeth are never lost.)
In order to make us feel like one of them, the film cuts the sound track at very close to full volume from beginning to end. You may want to bring earplugs.
Pete Dunham (Charlie Hunnam), the current head of the GSE, has lots of advice for their newest member. "What happens at football; stays at football," Pete lectures Matt on his first day out. Pete ridicules baseball, claiming that "baseball is a girl's game." Actually, firms are shown not to be the least bit interested in the game of soccer or their own clubs. They are only interested in banding with their boys, as they try to take down the other firms' guys. They live to fight and don't care if their odds are bad. Eight guys against thirty -- no problem.
My audience even had our group of a half-dozen young adults about the same ages as those in the film, their early twenties. They talked and yelled, and, when asked to shut up, they informed everyone in the theater that they were hooligans too. I think they meant it. It was a tad frightening. I didn't have Matt's bravado. I thought seriously about leaving rather than fighting. But the mere act of considering it made me think about the movie's message of the love of violence. On the whole, however, I wish they hadn't been there. It's one thing to mimic THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. It is another thing entirely to try to bring GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS to life in front of your eyes.
GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS runs 1:48. It is rated R for "brutal violence, pervasive language and some drug use" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, September 30, 2005. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
