Bexy wants to form a 'National Firm' made up from rival gangs. He wants this 'firm' to be big enough to take on the large international hooligan groups. Bexy meets leaders from other firms in the Tower Hotel in London. This includes the Buccaneers. The other gangs like the idea. They do not like the idea of Bexy being "top boy". The rival firms agree to fight each other to decide who will lead the new "firm" into Europe.
Bexy uses intimidation to keep his position as leader of the ICC. The young men think of themselves as respected figures in their local community. Bexy's wife tells him that is not correct. She says everyone thinks of him as a joke. She says they fear his violent nature, so few are willing to stand up to him.
The ICC survive violent clashes with the other gangs. They must still defeat the Buccaneers. Bexy is looking forward to defeating Yeti. Bexy beats up Yeti during the ICC's clash with the Buccaneers. He is shot dead by an injured Yeti.
The closing scene depicts the surviving ICC members in a pub. They honour Bexy as a hero. They will fight the European firms in memory of their dead leader. The hooligans agree that Bex was a visionary who brought them together. They give him legendary status. They vow to continue.
"The Firm" proved controversial.
It has been both celebrated and condemned for its violent content.
Tom Dawson in "The List" reported that it "is widely considered to be the toughest and most insightful screen depiction of football hooligans".
"Vice" critic Harry Sword wrote that ""The Firm" remains the definitive celluloid document on football hooliganism".
Philip French in "The Observer" described the film as "by some way the best movie on the subject of football hooliganism and a key text on the subject of Thatcher's Britain."
Film4 hailed "The Firm" as a "brilliant and compelling drama". It features Oldman "at his visceral, intense best".
Josh Winning of "Total Film" observed its "unflinching depictions of violence". He named Oldman's "stunning" performance as the best of his career.
In 2018, Matthew Thrift of the British Film Institute wrote that Bissell "remains probably Gary Oldman's greatest screen performance".
"The Firm" has been described as a cult classic.
The film was first released on VHS on 21 Oct 1996. It was in a double pack with the similarly themed ID.
A DVD was first released by Prism Leisure on 2 Feb 2004.
The film has been sold as part of numerous box-sets. These often include films of a similar nature or from director Alan Clarke.
On 10 Sep 2007, the BBC released a special edition DVD in collectible SteelBook packaging. Extra features on the special edition include:
A version of the film was included in the 2016 DVD set "Alan Clarke at the BBC, Volume 2: Disruption". This version includes censored scenes restored from tape. The new scenes include: a more graphic version of Bex's blinding of Oboe, a scene of Bex mock-raping his wife, and Bex performing a knife attack on Yeti's private parts).
It was also released as a stand-alone DVD. Both releases were under the British Film Institute's control.
The story was adapted by Nick Love into the 2009 film of the same name.
Firm (disambiguation)
A firm is a commercial partnership of two or more people.
Firm or The Firm may also refer to:
Randnet
Randnet is the online system for the Nintendo 64DD. It was required for it to function. It no longer exists as of now. The service was only released in Japan.
Millook
Millook is a place on the north coast of Cornwall. It has these remarkable cliffs. The cliffs at Millook are so famous they were voted by the Geological Society as one of Britain's top 10 geological sites. They came top of the "folding and faulting" category.
The cliffs have a series of horizontal chevron folds. The rocks were once sedimentary rocks laid down in deep water during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. We know this because they still contain brachiopod fossils of a type which lived in the late Devonian period. Later they were altered by heat from granite during mountain building in the English counties of Devon and Cornwall.
The Variscan orogeny caused the intrusion of the hot granite. The subsequent contact with the sandstones created the metamorphic rocks seen today. This also put intense pressure on the sediments causing them to be folded and faulted. What we see is a small part of a huge mountain system caused by a continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana. This formed the supercontinent of Pangaea.
Nintendo Network
The Nintendo Network is the online service for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. A Nintendo Network ID is required to use it.
Basel Mission
The Basel Mission was a Christian missionary society based in Basel, Switzerland. It was active from 1815 to 2001, when it transferred the operative work to Mission 21, the successor organization of "Kooperation Evangelischer Kirchen und Missione" (KEM), founded in 2001.
Duty to rescue
Duty to rescue is a concept that many law systems have: In certain cirumstances, someone can be held responsible for not helping another person who is in danger, and who would be injured, or who would die, if not helped. People are required to help to the best of their abilities. As a bare minimum, this often means alerting emergency services.
Not all law systems have this concept, and in general the following is true:
Those helping are often protected by law, against errors they make.
In many cases, the duty to rescue has become customary law. This is the case for example for helping people at sea.
A moral or ethical duty to rescue may exist even where there is no legal duty to rescue. Such a duty can be justified in different ways.
One kind of justification is general and applies regardless of role-related relationships: Under this general justification, people have a duty to rescue other people in distress because of their common humanity. With this justification, the specific skills of the rescuer or the nature of the victim's distress are irrelevant.
This kind would justify cases of rescue and in fact make such rescue a duty even between strangers. With this justification in mind, philosopher Peter Singer suggests that if one saw a child drowning and could intervene to save him, they should do so, if the cost is moderate to themselves. Damage to their clothing or shoes or how late it might make them for a meeting would be an insufficient excuse to avoid assistance. Singer goes on to say that one should also try to rescue distant strangers, not just nearby children, because globalization has made it possible to do so. Such general arguments for a duty to rescue also explain why after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Haitians were digging family members, friends, and strangers out of the rubble with their bare hands and carrying injured persons to whatever medical care was available. It also explains why, journalist and physician Sanjay Gupta and a number of other MD-journalists began acting as physicians to treat injuries rather than remaining uninvolved in their journalistic roles. Similarly, they justify journalist Anderson Cooper's attempt to shepherd an injured young boy away from some "toughs" nearby in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.
Specific arguments for such a duty to rescue include: