The Daily Telegraph, UK
May 7 2004
Hooligan movies are all the rage
(Filed: 07/05/2004)
We’re about to witness a rash of films about football violence – and
one of them stars Elijah Wood. By Matt Munday
Remember how Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels spawned a rash of
identikit Brit gangster flicks? And how there are only so many
wise-cracking spivs, cocked-up capers and Vinnie Jones temper
tantrums we can endure before the fun wears off? We may be about to
witness a similar boom-bust cycle. But instead of East End wise guys,
this time it’s football hooligans.
Firm stance: The Football Factory
No fewer than four films about the darker side of terrace culture are
due in the coming year. The one with the highest profile is likely to
be The Yank, a big-bucks Hollywood movie in which Elijah Wood – Frodo
in the Lord of the Rings trilogy – plays a Harvard drop-out who moves
to London and develops a taste for match-day madness. It has just
finished filming and will be released in January next year.
Then will come Irvine Welsh’s portrait of Cardiff City FC’s notorious
fighting gang, the Soul Crew, which is filming this summer. Then an
adaptation of reformed hooligan Cass Pennant’s autobiography,
Congratulations, You Have Just Met the ICF (an acronym for West Ham
United’s real-life fighting element, the Inter-City Firm).
But first out of the traps comes The Football Factory, directed by
Nick Love, whose 2001 debut, Goodbye Charlie Bright, won acclaim for
its gritty realism. That’s a quality also in evidence in his new
film, notably during The Football Factory’s shocking climax – a mass
brawl on a patch of south London waste ground between rival gangs
from Chelsea and Millwall. A bone-crunchingly accurate and
unflinching depiction of soccer violence, it ends with hapless lead
character Tommy Johnson (Danny Dyer) being kicked half to death. And
its authenticity derives in part from the fact that the majority of
the brawlers are the real thing.
“Previous films about football violence [the most recent of which was
1995’s risible ID] have never worked because of the lack of attention
to detail, the implausibility of the characters, and the ridiculous
way that the actual violence is handled,” says Love, in a heavy south
London accent.
“And there’s nothing worse than watching a film and thinking, ‘I
don’t believe this’. So we roped in thugs from most of the big London
‘firms’ – though we were terrified of local rivalries spilling over
into actual fighting. But the astonishing thing was, at the end of a
take, they all started clapping and bowing to each other.”
The Football Factory depicts four generations of white working-class
Londoners, all except the oldest – Bill Farrell, a Second World War
hero – trapped in a culture of brutal violence, moral apathy and
aspirational fashion (as in real life, the football hooligans are not
Dr Martens-wearing skinheads, but smartly dressed “casuals” clad in
upmarket brand names: Burberry, Stone Island and Aquascutum).
Thus, the bitter fortysomething Billy Bright (Lock, Stock’s Frank
Harper) mercilessly bullies the teenage wannabe Zeberdee (Roland
Manookian), who then metes out similar abuse to youngsters half his
age. True, throughout the film, twentysomething Tommy Johnson
questions whether the casual lifestyle is “worth it”, but he fails,
even after nearly losing his life, to choose another path.
So is The Football Factory a validation of the thug lifestyle, or is
it trying to pull off something more complex and challenging? When
the fight sequences are accompanied by an adrenaline-stoking
soundtrack from the likes of Primal Scream and The Streets, it is
easy to see how Love might be accused of the former – especially as
public apprehension increases in the run-up to Euro 2004.
‘We roped in thugs from most of the big London firms’
“All films should ask questions,” he says, “so I decided during
editing to sacrifice labouring any point. The criticism has already
started: people have said that it is hard to empathise with some of
the characters because of all the swearing and violence – but my
predicament was that I had to be truthful about them. At the same
time, I ensured there is less than five minutes of actual violence in
the whole film – I didn’t want to alienate the public.”
“Because football violence is such a hot potato,” says Manookian,
“it’s easy to overlook how balanced the film is.” His character,
Zeberdee, racially abuses an Asian family on a bus, to the disgust of
Bill Farrell. “The older character, Bill, actually fought against
far-Right extremists in the war, and that point is explicitly made in
the film,” says Manookian, who is of Armenian descent and endured
racist abuse himself while growing up in Bermondsey. “And I don’t
seriously think that any film has the power to affect English
hooliganism one way or another: if people are going to cause trouble
at Euro 2004, they’ll do it regardless.”
Neither Love, Manookian nor Harper had to do much research. “I’ve
been around people like that all my life,” says Harper. “It was just
part and parcel of where I grew up [near Catford, south London]. I’ve
never been involved in football violence – my dad would have disowned
me. And I’m one of a lucky minority that has found an outlet in the
arts. But there are generations out there who feel really lost – and
they are the most un-PC group in the country: white, working-class
heterosexuals. The people New Labour hate. They feel they’ve got no
place in their own country any more. And they are expressing their
frustration through drinking and violence.”
“This film has nothing to do with race,” insists Love. “It’s purely
an indictment of all that New Labour rubbish about England being a
classless society.”
So far, so grim. But has Love’s foray into hooligan culture afforded
any insight as to how society should tackle it? “It has got to come
from parenting and schooling,” he says, in a trice. “We should be
looking towards the one-year-olds and the unborns – because their
paths aren’t determined yet – and working out how to make their lives
better.”
‘The Football Factory’ is released next Friday