Solid documentation of an outsider drifting towards aggression and masculinity, as a grotesque life in a football firm takes over.

Rating: 6/10 (15 February 2010)

The comparisons to Nick Love's 2004 film The Football Factory are almost obligatory when talking of Green Street, but they are linked only by way of subject matter. The films are wildly different in their approaches and attitudes to football firm violence and gang life. Green Street tells the tale of an absolute outsider making his way into a football firm and gradually infiltrating the group as the ever volatile life of fighting and maiming takes a hold on them, seducing them into a stupor of all things crude and nasty. On the other hand, The Football Factory tells the story of a young man of about equal age to Green Street's lead, but instead documents a very gradual decline; focusing more on the way this lifestyle drags down his conscience and mental well-being as the match-day punch-ups take their toll. In short, I find The Football Factory to be one of the most frightening; most affecting and one of the more interesting British films of the last ten or so years whereas Green Street is a passable tale of a young man caught up in a reprehensible lifestyle and how this affects him for his longer run at life.
Green Street is more the processed film, in the sense it requires time to set up a lead and his 'current' lifestyle; introduce the characters they'll be spending the majority of their time with; have them enter this 'new' lifestyle; gradually build them up within that bubble before having it all implode and have everything linked to the demonisation of hooliganism play out – it is the quintessential Amercican fable of rising through the ranks. The Football Factory carried less of a preordained aura, it was a series of quite frightening scenes; situations; interactions and instances in which the lead, played by Danny Dyer, would very gradually reach a level of realisation, most of the time shrugging off these warning signs but unable to shake the question at the very core of that film: "Was it worth it?". Indeed, the intended audience is so far infused with Elijah Wood's lead here that football firms and hooliganism in general needs to be explained to him, in black and white, by someone more experienced with the lifestyle.
Green Street's Americanised sensibility is captured in its narrative structure; its more thorough attention to character arc and its somewhat flashy, glitzy aesthetic that it carries throughout, acting rather uncomplimentary with its disgusting subject matter. One is reminded of Alan Clarke's low-budgeted; grimy; scuzzy-looking 1988 effort The Firm which was, granted, made for television but gave the world in which it was set a downtrodden and frightening feel to it through its colour saturation and persistence on having the scenes play out in enclosed terrace streets complete with rock solid brick walls acting as the backdrop plus worn-out public houses in which large groups of men would be shot in close-up format instilling confrontation and claustrophobia.
It's said that German born female director Lexi Alexander is to have based the film on a number of real life instances with people of a similar ilk, but most of her characters are given some pretty unreal 'triggers' or prior tragedies to further both character and conflict; some of the characters having undergone specific transitions that render them specific archetypes that exist to aid the progression of the story. Examples include the psychotic firm leader whose son died many years ago as a result of some large scale fighting and the once feared 'general' whose lifestyle changed after he met a nice American woman and settled down. The use of these specific lifestyles and prior tragedies to emote both threat and the sense that something's at stake forces the film to feel a little fabricated, thus, pushing the film away a downtrodden sense that something like The Firm certainly had and The Football Factory effectively carried.
Indeed, it is Elijah Wood that plays American Matt Buckner, a guy who was expelled from Harvard university in America when his room-mate was busted for cocaine and he took the fall for it. After this, he consequently arrives in England, during which he meets all sorts of new and interesting people. Buckner's past low-point is established, as is the fact he is pushed around a little too easily in the drug charge and the early scuffle he has with friend and mentor to-be Pete Dunham (Hunnam), one item of which highlights how far he'll come in developing during his time in England with the other of which acting as the 'wrong' which exists to be 'righted'. Alexander captures the bond these men have, these big; well muscled men clutching a hold of each other as they sing and talk dirty in pubs, indeed Matt and Pete's relationship is taken to a point that sees a rival, Pete's former best friend, enter a public house as they share a drink and storm out again in a jealous rage when Matt and Pete's bonding is captured by way of his gaze.
I don't think the film enjoys the violence, nor does it invite us to enjoy it; more-so, it is the lead character that enjoys the rush of the violence while the scenes play out around him and this acceptance into a sub-culture occurs. Throughout, we know better than Wood's character; highlighted when Matt's father arrives in town and tells his son they can fight this drug charge together – but Matt isn't interested, and would rather stay in a reprehensible zone than continue a righteous life in higher education. The film's worth seeing; its supported by a number of decent performances, predominantly from Bell and Dunham while Wood does his usual 'caught in the headlights' act. Whilst more forced and fabricated than earlier hooligan studies, Green Street is a decent enough film that documents downfall of some degree and the eventual results of how violence and conflict is seen as something to look forward to.