Green Street?More like Sesame Street.....

Rating: 2/10 (20 July 2006)

Call it pedantry if you wish,but if I was making a film centred around supporters of a specific football team I would make sure that at the very least I got the words of their theme song right.No true Hammer would sing"....and like my dreams they fade and die..",it's "..then like my dreams they fade and die".....so much more schadenfreud as befits a team that played the beautiful game before the media invented it. And,despicable as these hooligans may be,at least they are fighting to win back football from the Guardianistas and bring it home to the people who breathed life into it and loved and supported it long before it became a fashion accessory for middle-class knobheads.These blokes will be shouting and screaming on the few remaining terraces at football grounds around the country long after Giles and Digby have returned to the jolly japes of the Varsity Match at Twickers. "Green Street" soon gives a clue regarding its intended audience;twice in the first five minutes we are treated to the phrase "Rhyming - slang" just in case we fail to understand how these alien beings are communicating with one another......"Bees and Honey - money....apples and pears - stairs...oh,I get it!How neat!" Most of the adulatory views of this movie come from an America safe from the phenomenon of the football hooligan and where they may be regarded as some sort of exotic species ,here in the UK we are under no such misconception. Dougie Brimston,the co-writer of this rubbish,has made a living out of chronicling street violence connected to football for some time. He certainly knows a lot of swear words,the first line of dialogue in the movie is "F... me!",which rather sets the tone for what is to follow.Lots of extremely unpleasant cockneys run about kicking and punching and spitting blood everywhere for far too long.Shouldn't they be at home with Richard and Judy's Book Club Choice?During their last spell of bird (rhyming -slang) did they forego the Anger Management Classes? There is-for want of a better word - a plot but it is an insult to the intelligence of anyone over the age of nine.There is also - yet again for want of a better word - acting,albeit outrageously bad acting.It is as if the director assembled all of the thesps who failed their auditions for "Eastenders" and shut them in a pub with instructions to drink themselves stupid for 3 days then filmed the results. I will not court the libel laws by naming names,but many of these actors are clearly more used to resting than acting,and,in an ideal world,will remain so. There is not a single imaginative shot in the whole movie,not one believable moment.I watched in vain for the slightest sign that a creative hand was on the tiller. Alas,the abiding image for me was a group of fat sweaty middle-aged blokes milling around in "artistic" slo - mo. Fine if that's your thing.Me - I'd rather watch Sumo Wrestling on TV.