Hooligans (film)

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Movie
German title Hooligans
Original title Green Street hooligans
Green Street Hooligans Logo.png
Country of production United States ,
United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2005
length 109 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Lexi Alexander
script Lexi Alexander,
Dougie Brimson ,
Josh Shelov
production Deborah Del Prete ,
Gigi Pritzker ,
Donald Zuckerman
music Christopher Franke
camera Alexander Buono
cut Paul Trejo
occupation

Hooligans (original title Green Street Hooligans , also Green Street ) is a genre film by the director Lexi Alexander from 2005 . It's about hooligans in England . Elijah Wood plays the leading role as Matt Buckner.

action

The young American Matt Buckner is about to graduate from his journalism studies when he illegally flies from Harvard University : his roommate on campus had hidden his own cocaine in Matt's closet. Matt leaves the United States and flies to live with his sister Shannon in London . There he meets his brother-in-law Steve Dunham and his brother Pete for the first time. Pete takes Matt to the pub owned by GSE, the Green Street Elite , a nationally known hooligan group ("Company") around London's West Ham United football club . Matt sees his first visit to the stadium at a home game for West Ham. After the game he gets into a fight between hostile hooligan groups in which he can assert himself. Matt is fascinated by the camaraderie and cohesion within the GSE and begins to dive more and more into the hooligan scene.

Shannon and Steve are critical of the new friendship between Pete and Matt, as Steve knows exactly which scene Pete is in. Pete says that only cops and journalists have a worse reputation than a Yankee in the hooligan scene . Matt then claims to have studied history. However, when the other members of the GSE accidentally find out that Matt studied journalism, they mistake him for an undercover journalist who wants to write a story about them. Steve, himself a former leader of the GSE ("the major "), wants to warn Matt about the angry friends and meets with him in the group's regular pub. Pete joins the other GSE members and confronts Matt. Matt can convince him of his innocence, but not the skeptical Bovver, who suddenly goes to the thugs of arch rivals Millwall FC with their leader Tommy Hatcher and betrays his own cronies. While Matt and the others are still arguing in the pub, the Millwall hooligans suddenly storm the pub to settle an old score with Steve: ten years ago, Tommy Hatcher's son was killed in a major- led GSE attack. Steve is badly injured by a cut in the neck. With Steve covered in blood, Bovver begins to understand what he's done. He steals a car to take Steve to the hospital.

Pete arranges a fight with the Millwall hooligans the next morning to settle the differences for good. Despite Shannon and Pete's objections, Matt wants to help his friends with the final brawl before he flies back to the United States. In the middle of the battle in Docklands , Shannon shows up with her son to save Matt from the worst. Tommy Hatcher wants to avenge the death of his own son and tries to attack Shannon and her child. Pete succeeds in distracting Hatcher, who hits him until Pete dies of his injuries.

Eventually Matt flies back to Harvard and uses a trick to trick his former roommate into confessing that the drugs were once hiding and thus proving Matt's innocence. The final scene shows Matt walking down an American street singing a modified version of the song I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles , the West Ham United anthem.

Reviews

“Narrated in a handcrafted manner, the battles are staged as fast-paced action sequences, whereby the film increasingly lapses into a dumb comradeship pathos and the senseless escalations of violence are stylized into heroic deeds. Hooliganism as a school of masculinity, you can hardly approach the subject more naively. "

- Lexicon of international film

“This film does not answer the initial question either. Instead, he credibly portrays a milieu in which violence has become an everyday ritual, the meaning and purpose of which no one questions anymore. The gentle-eyed Elijah Wood is relieved of the balancing act between disgust and fascination for this "fight club". Conclusion: not in-depth, but gripping and realistic. "

- Cinema

various

  • Although the film doesn't tell a true story, there are strong parallels to the real (former) hooligan groups Inter City Firm (ICF) (West Ham) and Bushwhackers (Millwall).
  • The game that the protagonists attend is not, as described in the film, West Ham against Birmingham, but the game West Ham against Gillingham . This took place on March 27, 2004 and ended 2-1 for West Ham United. Birmingham played in the Premier League during the 2003/2004 season , while West Ham only played in the Football League First Division , the second-highest division in England at the time.
  • In one of the first scenes in the hooligan milieu, the American Matt is introduced to Cockney slang. Matt's own pronunciation immediately reveals him to the attacking Zulus from Birmingham as a Yankee , but later also helps him to fool the Manchester hooligans into believing that he belongs to a Hollywood film crew . These language punchlines only work in the original English version.
  • At The Abbey , in the film the local pub GSE, is in fact the restaurant The Griffin which to Brentford Football Club is one of West London.
  • Leo Gregory, starring West Ham fanatic Bovver, is an ardent fan of the Wolverhampton Wanderers in real life .
  • In one scene of the film, Bovver puts on an orange jacket for media representatives, manages to get into the interior unrecognized and mobbed opposing fans from there. An action in January 2018 is reminiscent of this scene: At the Bundesliga match between 1. FC Köln and Borussia Mönchengladbach , three Cologne fans also put on orange vests, enter the interior undetected and steal the flag of a rival fan club.

Awards

Lexi Alexander won the LA Femme Film Festival and Malibu Film Festival awards in 2005 .

Sequels

In 2009 the film Hooligans 2 - Stand Your Ground (original title: Green Street 2 - Stand Your Ground ) was released as a direct-to-DVD production, followed in 2013 by Hooligans 3 - Never Back Down (in the original Green Street 3: Never Back Down , also: Green Street Hooligans: Underground ) with Scott Adkins in the lead role, also in a direct-to-DVD process. While only Ross McCall appears in the first sequel, nobody from the original cast can be seen in the third part.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for hooligans . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2005 (PDF; test number: 103 599 DVD).
  2. ↑ Hooligans. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 7, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Cinema.de: film review