Disappointing glorification of football hooliganism

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2006)

Elijah Wood's two-year honeymoon period after Lord of the Rings has finally worn off. The baby-faced and huge-eyed 24-year-old returns to a lead role in this gritty study of football-related violence and really couldn't have been less suited to the role if he'd tried. He plays Matt, a young journalism student who moves to London after being expelled from Harvard. With no Gandalf to keep him on the straight and narrow, Wood falls in with a bad crowd - hooligans with a nasty hobbit of getting into booze-fuelled, adrenaline-pumping brawls after West Ham matches. As Matt moves deeper and deeper into the violent Green Street Elite, the tension builds, as other members turn against their new American comrade-in-arms.
Ultimately however, despite it's potential, the film is a disappointment, a nil-nil draw. Charlie Hunman, who plays the gang's leader, has a cockney accent less convincing than Dick Van Dyke's in 'Mary Poppins' and Elijah Wood seems more suited to playing that practically perfect nanny than he is to being a blood thirsty thug. Like 'The Football Factory' before it, 'Green Street' seems to glorify, rather than condemn, mindless violence without any of the storyline or performances of Alan Clarke's 'The Firm', a much better take on working class football fanatics.