forgettable green street

Rating: 3/10 (19 September 2005)

I must admit, as someone who watches films almost as emphatically as they enjoy watching football, I have been looking forward to Green Street with not only joyful anticipation, but also vexing trepidation. The reason for these mixed feelings is simple. Whereas I am all too familiar with the passion that immerses people in Britain's most watched and most loved sport, I was somewhat weary and quite sceptical owing to the deluge of recent films that have feebly attempted to capitalise on every nook and cranny on western culture and history.
Unfortunately my worst feelings were realised when I watched a ludicrously miscast and grossly exaggerated film that was as unrealistic as it was forgettable. It would not be unreasonable to disagree with The Times' 'The Knowledge' supplement that Charlie Hunnam's cockney accent is the worst since Dick van Dykes, or that Elijah Wood is poorly miscast as a young impressionable lad caught in a zeitgeist renaissance of a London gang. The pros in this film, although vastly outweighed by the cons, would include the ensemble cast, particularly Geoff Bells portrayal of the opposition leader, and the other members of the Green Street Elite. Welcomed also is the depiction of the average hooligan, an educated, considerate and sociable person as oppose to the immoral and depraved hoodlum that the media so quickly vindicates. However the unrealistic clapping and chanting of rowdy West Ham hoolies is choreographed so well Torvill and Dean would take notes, whereas the toe-to-toe fight scenes have been savagely debased through digital trickery. Combined with the nagging deductions that the key material in this film is directly plagiarised from the far superior 'The Football Factory' and 'The Firm', you can appreciate that although it is by no means imprudent to breath new life into such a well documented idea, to do it in such a slip shot execution is outrageously inept.
To see the flaws in Green Street, you have to recognise that it plays like a comic strip chain of events, an embellishment lacking in any of the true grittiness needed in such a poignant and ardent subject.