The Firm

Plot synopsis:
Clive Bissel (nicknamed "Bex", or "Bexy") is a married man with a baby son. He is the leader of a hooligan firm known as the ICC (Inter City Crew). His wife no longer approves of his activities as a football hooligan, which contrast to his respectable job as an estate agent. Even when his baby son injures himself with a craft knife Bexy has carelessly left lying around, he is unwilling to give up violence as he admits it gives him a "buzz". Conversely, Bexy's father shows acceptance of his son's lifestyle, happily taking a group photograph of the 'tooled up' gang and boasting of similar activities in his own era. However, he feels that Bex and his friends have gone soft because they now use weapons and worry too much about strategy, instead of just getting on with fighting rival mobs.
The film begins with a rival gang called "The Buccaneers" vandalising Bexy's Ford Sierra XR4x4 and spraying graffiti in a football dressing room while Bexy and his mates are playing football. Bexy's arch nemesis and leader of the Bucaneeers Yeti then drives a white Volkswagen Golf GTi cabriolet across the football pitch.
With an imminent international football tournament in Holland, Bexy wants to form a 'National Firm' - comprising several rival gangs - big enough to take on the well organised and large international hooligan groups. Bexy meets leaders from other firms in the Tower Hotel in London, including the Buccaneers. The other gangs like the idea but don't like the idea of Bexy being top boy. The rival firms then agree to fight each other in order to determine who will lead the new, amalgamated firm into Europe.
Bex and his fellow hooligans only possess any kind of social status amongst their own groups, and Bex relishes being looked up to and admired by the younger men in his own firm. Bexy used his natural leadership qualities to cajole and encourage his peers, and uses intimidation to cement his position as leader of the ICC. These young men think of themselves as important, respected figures in their local community, but Bexy's wife tells him that the truth is somewhat different. Everyone thinks of him as a joke, she says, but because they fear his violent nature, few are willing to point out to him that he isn't the working class hero he thinks he is.
The ICC survive violent clashes with the other gangs but must still defeat the Buccaneers. Bexy is relishing the chance to defeat Yeti. Bexy beats up Yeti during the ICC's clash with the Buccaneers in a pub but is then shot dead by an injured Yeti. Just before being shot, Bexy expresses astonishment and disbelief Yeti has a gun and say's 'Oh, come on!' before Yeti pulls the trigger.
The closing scene depicts the surviving ICC members in a pub, honouring Bexy as a hero. They claim when they are fighting European firms at the forthcoming tournament, they will be doing so in memory of their dead leader. The hooligans from three different firms, who were fighting each other not long ago, agree that Bex was a visionary who brought them together giving him legendary status. The death of Bexy doing nothing to make them change their behaviour and they vow to continue.

Tags: violence, humor, murder

Review:
Like a lot of people, when I first heard the news that Nick Love was "updating" the original version of The Firm I anticipated the worst.
My objection lay not so much in the fact it was a remake of a classic film, but more as to why we needed yet another film centering on football hooliganism.The argument that such material merely glamorizes the violence it depicts, (appealing as it does to a section of youth that also worship the fashion and lingo of the genre) is without question.
Self conscious fight sequences shot through with booming dance interludes, whilst a preoccupation with all things bloody gave way to an orgiastic ending which was more like a scene from Braveheart than a realistic portrayal of football mob violence.Which brings us back to Love and The Firm.
Central character "Dominic" shares an all too believable rapport with his father, forever wrangling money from him, whilst both parents playfully tease him throughout the film - trying their best not to cramp his style when a friend catches Dom at his local sports store.It is this held focus on the family, combined with the way in which Dominic is positioned when the violence first unfolds (felled by a single punch and then little more than a terrified witness for the remainder of the film)that make for a clear mission statement on the behalf of the director.The scenes of violence here must also be commended for their reserve and authenticity.
Thanks to Love's impeccable eye for the 1980s, the sense of watching a documentary on football violence runs close at times, with the camera skittering about to capture snatches of fight that never quite take off as quite accurately, the police intervene - with their standard uniform and makeshift formation, capturing them in flux before the later arrival of CCTV and full riot gear.This lends real tension to these scenes.
Even the more "laddish" Football Factory tended not to dwell on the full scale chaos between its football gangs and Love has clearly kept this in mind with The Firm.It must be said however, that the film hardly breaks new territory.
(within what is already a very limited genre) Though there is no question that the look and feel of the era has been captured brilliantly and that as top boy "Bex" Paul Anderson is suitably charged, with its rather obvious ending - an eye for an eye simply meaning someone will end up losing their head, it is at least a refreshing twist to see Love's championing of the values of friends and family over the raging poison of the hooligans themselves..
Not a football hooligan movie, or a patch on the original.
Paul Anderson does a pretty good job as Bex Bissle, however the performance can only be described as lacklustre when compared to the tower of menace and intensity that Gary Oldmans original incarnation produced.Now. If you are going to see this in the hope that its another Football Factory/Green Street/Rise Of The Footsoldier orgy of football and people bashing the crap out of each other, you will be sadly disappointed.This film does however contain Elise tracksuits, Adidas trainers, some bad haircuts and a decent soundtrack.
Im actually very surprised that this merits an 18 certificate.However, the film is well acted, does feel quite indie and very British, though the trailer for that new Michael Caine movie was most likely the most excited i got in the whole 2 hours.Yes see this movie if your interested in the subject matter, but if you haven't seen the original and want to watch a proper football hooligan movie, check that out instead..
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning A re-make of the 1988 TV play with Paul Anderson taking over Gary Oldman's original role as Bex, the property agent whose buzz in life is being the head boy of The West Ham Firm.
But Bex takes a shine to Dom and invites him to join his army...but as events go on, it becomes more and more clear how Bex's drive for his 'buzz' has pushed him over the edge.I'd been expecting an adaptation of The Sweeney to be Nick Love's next filmic venture, but instead this re-make of Alan Clarke's original TV film has arrived.
It's still set in the 80s but nostalgia for that era is the main decent thing you take away from this film.There's no drive to this version of The Firm, no 'oompth' or real wow factor.
It may be that the 'football hooligan' movie has been done to death and everything's a bit too predictable, but the tracksuits the main characters wear are the most colourful thing about the film.
The film sort of just ambles along with no real narrative flow or direction, and with a distinct lack of fun or excitement to the proceedings.Performances wise, rising star Daniel Mays feels wasted as Bex's sworn enemy Yeti, whilst as the man himself Anderson gives no real power to the role.
Nick Love's films are not about football violence, they are about men.
The men in Nick Loves films are always flawed & struggling to find their place in a world that regards their attitude and energies as irrelevant, and as a result they are drawn, by the perceived excitement and glamour, into the bosom of the street gang.
Nick Love's films open up this world of male adversarial culture and expose it to the sun light.
In fact one of the reasons Nick Loves films manage to gain finance, is that he is always aware of his audience and as a result has built a loyal following that feel understood by a British film maker.
It is lazy not to understand the themes Nick Love is trying to explore, and too easy to join the band wagon of criticism, which in many ways mimics the criticism boys & men face through out their life, as their energies are misunderstood.
Nick Love however, is not Alan Clarke and his subjects, although similar, are very different.
Alan Clarke's main thesis was political and his original film was written in a time that saw the working class being remodelled along Thatcherite principles.
While it cannot be denied that the political pressures and unrest of the Thatcher period were profound, and gave rise to a number of dispossessed subcultures, Nick Love's film operates in a world of the personal, not political.
Gone are the endless scenes debating the rights and wrongs of football violence, which felt heavy with the hand of the filmmaker, and in comes a confident understanding of the world of the story.
One could argue that Clarke & Hunters original film failed to fully understand the subculture they used as their political vehicle.
In one of the final scenes of the original 'Firm', a minor characters says to a documentary crew,''..its not about the football, we would organize around darts if we could'' ..
Football violence existed long before Clarke or Love, what happened in the 1980s, is it became highly organized, and as Love correctly identifies in his film, it became 'fashionable'.
Nick Love's 'The Firm' understands this and in many ways is a truer representation of this phenomenon.
Despite Nick Love being the most criticised film director working in Britain today his remake of THE SWEENEY has topped the UK film this week .
This film a remake of the highly regarded Alan Clarke drama from 1989 is a previous attempt to be cynical Clarke was along with Loach and Leigh the master of British realist cinema .
The second half does borrow heavily from the original teleplay but no doubt anyone who can remember the original will say the original was better and harder hitting This is a great shame because it's something of a brave decision by Love to retell the story from the point of view from Dom who was a relatively minor character from the 1989 FIRM .
Cynics might say that's because there's no way someone of Love's reputation could get someone of the stature of an up and coming Gary Oldman to carry the film as the main character , can you imagine Danny Dyer as Bex !
first of all, the original firm is impossible to top, to start with - so why remake it in the first place?this film is predictable, as is the message, but its also boring!
nick love should have just tried and make a documentary about firms in the 80s, instead of remaking the same film over and over again.
they should have made a film about the German world cup, when lots of frustrated wannabee hooligans started beating up each other when there was just no one to fight with...I'd like to see that!please no more films about guy-love by nick love!
It's empty, absolutely one of the worst films I've ever seen.You can't help but compare it against the original, but even taken in isolation this stinks to high heaven.Several scenes stand out for a complete lack of any actual emotion, and for a subject that's suppose to be about intensity, just that raw emotion, that's really quite staggering !!
It's like it was made as some sort of joke, perhaps ?The fight scenes are a ham-fisted joke, the confrontation between Snowy and Bex actually had me laughing it was so awful."Put your hands together for.....
There are two major factors that separate Nick Love's reimagining of his football hooligan film The Firm from Alan Clarke's original 1988 television play: the first is a perspective change from the point of view of the repulsive yet compelling character Bex (played in this version by Paul Anderson, who does a fair job of imitating Gary Oldman but doesn't bring anything new to the table), to that of whiny, annoying, dry-lunch Dom who just appears to exist in every scene he's in.
Love's direction is the epitome of style over substance, opting for an over-stylised imagining of 1980s Britain complete with neon lights, a nostalgic soundtrack, and a never-ending slew of tracksuits that look like they were produced in a Haribo factory.
It also doesn't help the film that Love seems to be aware that his screenplay is inferior to the source material, with key scenes from the original being replicated seemingly beat for beat and inserted clumsily into the narrative when it begins to falter.
Gary Oldman was a real 'psycho' in the original, Paul Anderson does a reasonable job but just wasn't menacing enough.
Overall, it's a watchable film but it's not a great football film, not a lot of action and it isn't the best hooligan film to date, the original still takes that accolade.
It's a shame but I don't think the original 'Firm' is likely to be beaten..
The original 'The firm' was a great film with some great British actors in it.
Alan Clarke was a great director and there was no need to have a go at re-makin this film.
The biggest question that films like this, green street etc leave me asking is..why on earth is the UK NOT considered a 3rd world country?
It was apparently a big budget compared to AWAYDAYS but felt more like an Eastenders episode.I think Nick Love has got some real talent in there as he seems to understand what the average Joe wants to see.
Anyways, this version follows 'Dom' a young football casual who gets drawn into the dangerous world of "The Firm" because of his fast mouth and sense of humour, then as the violence reaches a peak he finds he can't get out.This was still pretty good.
One says to the other, "I should stick a Tampax in you." "Why?" "Cos you're a c***." If you enjoyed that, here's another joke for you: Nick Love's The Firm - a remake of the late Alan Clarke's final film, the only good drama about British football hooliganism ever produced.
Just check out Green Street, I.D. or Love's own The Football Factory if you're unsure about that.In Gary Oldman's Clive 'Bex' Bissell, Clarke's 1988 original features one of the all-time great screen villains: an upwardly mobile Loadsamoney with a sociology A-level and a Stanley knife.
For Bex, Trigger and Snowy read Thatcher, Tebbit and Hesseltine.So, given the class, calibre and integrity of Clarke's output - and given Nick Love's - we haven't felt such a sinking feeling about a remake since Neil LaBute released The Wicker Man Mark II.
A reaction the director himself anticipates: "I know there is an element of cynical people who are taking issue with the fact I've remade The Firm." It's a fair cop, Nick.
The kind of clobber 17-year-old Dominic (Calum McNab) eagerly sports in his infatuated attempts to please West Ham firm leader Bex (Paul Anderson).
The hapless lad is soon pitched into the violent world of Saturday turf wars with old rivals Millwall, discovering the hard way that what might look exciting on telly is acutely painful in real life.Love has dutifully re-staged a few key scenes from the original.
The rest is fat; less a remake of Alan Clarke even, than a Football Factory rematch.
Instead, to please multiplex audiences, "which is what I'm aiming this at, you've got to have big fight scenes and lots of loud music".Thus, deliberately shorn of any socio-political context (although the West Ham-Millwall kick-up of August 2009 has been an unfortunately well-timed gift, promotion-wise), this shallow and pointless remake settles for rehashing Love's single idea, familiar from his previous three pictures, in which a young, weedy, working-class guy gets sucked into a violently glamorous world led by a charismatic father figure who eventually turns round and bites him, before our hero escapes with a few scrapes and bruises.
The music may be authentic, and the typeface spot-on, but the atmosphere just isn't there.Given its director's claims to abhor violence, The Firm also broadcasts some extremely mixed messages: over some soppy piano chords, we're invited to feel sorry for Bex and Co after they and their motors take a battering.
Dom is a teenager who finds himself drawn into the charismatic world of football 'casuals,influenced by the firm's top boy, Bex.Accepted by the gang for his fast mouth and sense of humour, Dom soon becomes one the boys.But as Bex and his gang clash with rival firms across the country and the violence spirals out of control, Dom realises he wants out - until he learns it's not that easy to simply walk away.I do like Nick Love.
That was a gritty film, not glamorising the violence, and Focused on Bex's family life struggling with his obsession of football.
And it was sometimes very funny with it's witty script.Even though this film is entertaining, they have made a huge mistake by not focusing on Bex as the main character, they have decided to go down the route of every football hooligan flick, and focus on a newbie.And it just doesn't have the same impact.
The Football Factory/Green Street/Awaydays have already covered this, so why did Love decide to take a step back.Other than that though the film is quite solid, and a lot of the characters are amusing, and if you are a fan of the eighties, you will feel a little bit of nostalgia hearing music and seeing TV shows and the fashion.So it's not all bad, but sadly a little disappointing, especially the scenes that are taken right from the original.If you haven't seen the Oldman version, see this first, and see a true classic..
what i aspect to be a great movie like its predecessor Green Street Hooligan melt like an ice cream..
green street hooligan far more interesting than this,the plot cover every way,from life ,pride, conflict, fight, brave and humor..
i think the main plot here was about the football fan life but its failed as it was too straight forward,directly into some kind of hooligan-wannabe but in immature way..
it doesn't focus on what a football fan for even about hooligan-wannabe but more into gang fight, territory,revenge and power..
The late Alan Clarke's original 1988 version of The Firm was an allegory on the Thatcher regime dealing with the rise of football violence in the suburbs.
At the very least though, it did have a point and a purpose, both of which must have run for the hills when the 'genius' that is Nick Love (the non-thinking man's Guy Ritchie) came a-knocking at this particular property's door for a Noughties 'reimagining'.With an impressive lack of insight/understanding for the source material, Mockney-boy Love launches his audience head first into an ineptly staged 1984 set tale, of a young wannabe soccer lout, Dom (Calum McNab), finding himself befriended and welcomed into the ICC's ranks by top dog, Bex (Paul Anderson), only to get on his bad side when he develops cold feet and tries to make a run for it.Love club-footedly hops from one ill devised scene to the next, assaulting the senses with his trademark tin-eared dialogue and vacuous pop-promo visuals, making it increasingly obvious that he has no more interest in the psychological make-up of working class hoodlums than he does in trying to hone credible performances from his largely wooden cast.
Nick Love makes a humorous and attractive film which also packs a punch in delving into football hooliganism throughout the eighties.
One thing that its lacking though is a real introduction into the casuals,the main rival (Yeti) isn't present enough and as tough as he is meant to be, and the only two characters that stand out are Bex and Dom with their very funny and dramatic relationship,the other boys in their firm are quite poorly presented too they have a handful of lines and are therefore wasted characters that would add a more overall feel to the hooligans.
But if you can get over this minor fault, you will enjoy the fights(their brilliant),the insight into hooligan life and being back in the eighties(a scorching soundtrack).
Enjoy Nick Love's finest work yet.