Green Street film review

certificate_18

GREEN STREET

Green Street Hooligans is the worst kind of exploitative filmmaking masquerading as art. Adopting every conceivable cliché associated with the sociopathic aspects of football hooliganism, it's about as realistic as Shrek, but far less entertaining. One clue to its irrelevance is its timing, or lack thereof. While hooliganism has not exactly disappeared, it's thankfully no longer as pervasive as it once was, which makes a film that purports to explore the loyalty and honour amongst hooligans as redundant as it is misguided.

Quite why Elijah Wood felt compelled to take the role of Matt Buckner, a Harvard journalism student who trades the American Ivy league for the English football league, is a mystery. Unless, along with his role of a cannibal in Sin City, he is trying to shed his cuddly Frodo image for something darker. Whatever his reasons, Wood does an admirable job under the circumstances and it's certainly not his fault Green Street Hooligans is so woeful.

The culture of hooliganism is as bewildering as it fascinating. It's a phenomenon that has been explored exhaustively in literature with the best example being Bill Buford's excellent Among The Thugs. The 1993 book draws obvious comparisons with Green Street in that Buford, like Buckner, is an American journalist who becomes fascinated with the violent tribalism of football supporters. The difference is, Buford offers an intellectual perspective along with visceral accounts of the fighting, while the film ignores the more profound issues in favour of focusing on the bloody confrontations, which it stages so lamely.

One other key factor is the miscast performance of Charlie Hunnam as Pete Dunham, the head of West Ham's GSE (Green Street Elite). Cropped hair and a cute smile does not a convincing thug make. Best known for his portrayal of a gay teenager in Queer As Folk, Hunnam lacks the threat or authority of someone who heads one of the toughest "firms" in the country. He swaggers about like Liam Gallagher and adopts a cockney accent that would make Dick Van Dyke wince.