This is not a good review

Rating: 2/10 (11 April 2006)

This review contains lots of spoilers. Trust me, you're better off knowing how bad this film is before you spend any money.
Basically a half-hearted retread of the superior "I.D.", This film attempts to show the reality of a life of football hooliganism using quasi-"Fight Club" philosophy and "Grange Hill"-style acting.
Those who say that this film does not glorify violence must have seen a very different cut from the one that I watched. Not only is violence given status as a way to "feel alive" (you'll see what I mean about "Fight Club"), but no explanation is offered as to why Elijah Wood's character gets involved in the first place. He turns up, gets invited to a football match, nearly gets beaten up, and then he's a football hooligan. Why? Just because.
The acting is mostly poor, with the best performances coming from incidental characters, while the leads butcher the already hackneyed and predictable script.
The most obvious offender from the beginning of the film is Charlie Hunnam as gang leader Pete. It is unbelievable that this guy, who hails from Northern England, has a London accent worse than Dick van Dyke's. I thought he was an American actor making a bad job of the accent until I looked him up on the IMDb. This performance jars from the first scene of the film, and is one of the major factors that gang up on this film and kick its head in.
Despite being filmed on location, using mostly British actors and including footage of real football matches, the film feels as though it is being viewed through an American filter. A typical example the idea that London (a city of ten million people) cannot be navigated without running into people you know at every turn.
Wood's character receives no development - considering that we are supposed to be seeing the world of football hooliganism through his eyes, it would have been nice to know more about him than simply the fact that he is an American student. The other lead characters are also two-dimensional at best.
Major plot developments make no sense whatsoever. For example, at the end of the film, a main character turns up driving past a fight at Trinity Buoy Wharf, supposedly on her way to the airport. Aside from the fact that you can't get to an airport by driving onto Trinity Buoy Wharf, she has no business being there, and could have quite easily escaped without her arrival becoming the pivotal plot point that it turns out to be.
Other major plot points suffer from the same problems. A member of "the firm" becomes disgruntled for apparently no reason when Wood's character arrives, and his first act is to ride six and a half miles across London on a scooter, in order to eat a pie and pea supper in the middle of territory belonging to a vicious rival gang. Please, someone tell me why. The same character's later "Judas" role becomes predictable but utterly without explanation.
Also, a major character turns out to be a former hooligan, and despite this development being telegraphed from the start, it is presented as a shocking surprise twist. This is only mildly satisfying as you get to turn to your fellow viewers and say, "told you it was him," having predicted it within the first ten minutes. As a whole, the story is riddled with holes, and is deeply unsatisfying.
The much-praised violence is in fact presented in a series of fast cuts, and usually takes the form of someone being hit in the side of the face, turning their head and having a bit of blood fall out of their mouth. Any sense of realism is taken away by the Rocky IV-style punch sound effects.
Journalists are held up as figures of hatred for the hooligans, and when it is revealed (in another unrealistic scenario) that Wood's character is a trainee journalist, the vitriol he encounters just doesn't add up. An earlier vague suggestion that "journos" tell lies about hooliganism is thrown away by the fact that no lies are actually told by any journalist at any point in the story. There's a sense that a whole section of the film has been cut in which the hatred of journalists is set up. As it stands, the idea doesn't hold up.
The story is weak and predictable, the message weak and pointless, and the casting lazy.
The ultimate truth behind this film is that it has been done before, and far better. I recommend watching "I.D." instead, in which undercover policemen infiltrate a football hooligan gang, and real tension is created by the fear of what will happen to them if their identity is discovered. "ID" also has a good story, and a central character who we learn a great deal about, as well as inventive plot devices and terrific acting, as well as hooliganism scenes with genuine realism and menace.
For those who have commented positively on this film, I have only one thing to say:
Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.