"Green Street Hooligans" (2005) - Movie Review

Wrongly accused of possessing a drug, an American student Matt Buckner played by Elijah Wood is expelled from Harvard. Fed up to confide with his dad’s answering machine, he heads to London to stay with his sister Shannon played by Claire Forlani who lives with her husband Steve. Steve portrayed by Marc Warren has a brother Pete performed by Charlie Hunnam. Matt hangs out with Pete in his first day in the country and thereby enters the dark parts of London wherein Football or Soccer is considered more than a game.

The movie is marked by an impressive start with the gritty cinematography of the mean streets of London. Like Matt, the viewer learns the religion of soccer and the gangs or “firms” associated with a team. They also learn how far one would take the fight away from the stadium and the bloody violence involved in it. Matt’s friendly face and mannerism along with the palm on his head from the leader of the “firm, Pete, makes an easy path for him to mingle with the Firm easily. Being expelled from the best institution and in a new country with lots of drink and crazy friends gives the young kid the right mixture for confusion, putting him in the exact state of mind to do the wrong things right. This moment has been captured with nice details by the director. From there on, it’s no stopping for Matt and his new buddy Pete to take on the opposite firm of the team “Milwall”.

Having set the right momentum and the pace for the movie, the director did not grab the opportunity till the end. The movie with brisk pace and curiosity which was consistent till the midway of the story falters after it. There seems to be a heavy contemplation in the director’s mind whether to make it an utterly dark piece with moving message or make it spicy entertainer with an underlying final say embedded in it. This contemplation turned against the movie which brings down the pace very slowly and steadily till the end. “Green Street Hooligans” was almost there but did not run that extra mile to hit the audience right in the spot where it would have made an extreme difference and have produced an excellent entertaining movie.

Elijah Wood fits the role of the young American, born with a silver spoon. He also tried to bring the anger and rage necessary for the character. The real show was put on by Charlie Hunnam as Pete bringing the right amount of dark humour and care for the character. Rest of the cast did their job with enjoyable cockney accent necessary enough.

As per the editing is concerned, it is slick but not novel. The soundtracks were fit at the right places and just when I was about to completely admire those, the final episode of movie had a very badly placed song which kind of took all the nice part away from the sequence and also from the song selection department.

There were instances of Matt explaining his feelings on becoming one of the members of the firm but if that could have been extended throughout the movie, it could have added some more real emotions to the character. Definitely one of the few good starts, I have witnessed in recent days for a movie of this genre, but the screenplay was not good enough to keep it going all along the way.

“Green Street Hooligans” kicks the ball right at the target till half time and starts kicking the ball all over the place randomly in the second half to settle for a draw match which could have been won.

(Thanks to Mathi for Proof Reading)