Blog From The Bench

Green Street Hooligans
Directed By Lexi Alexander

The easy way to pigeonhole any project that stars Elijah Wood is that he won't seem to age for another decade or so, and there are some scenes in Green Street Hooligans that do remind you of this. Good lord, he's only 24 years old?

But this is a far cry from his Frodo incarnations. North comes to England to kick some ass! Wood plays Matt Buckner, the son of a prominent journalist who attends Harvard, and is expelled because of a ethics issue with his roommate, who is also a son of a prominent politician. Matt's father is constantly away on assignment, so Matt decides to go to England to visit his sister Shannon (Claire Forlani, Meet Joe Black). Shannon is married to Steve (Marc Warren, Band of Brothers), who has a contentious brother named Pete (Charlie Hunnam, Cold Mountain). Steve wants to get Matt out of the house so that him and Shannon can have a romantic night together, and Steve has Pete take him to the football (British, not American) match.

At first, Matt and Pete don't get along well, but they strike up a friendship after Matt is jumped by some fans of the rival club. Matt finds out that Pete is the head of the home club's fan club, called a firm, where folks that have a common passion for alcohol and the home club (West Ham United), and vigorously defend their ground against other club's firms.

Directed by Lexi Alexander, whose previous film was the Oscar-nominated short Johnny Flynton, the subject matter in Green Street Hooligans does have some violent scenes in it, but Alexander shoots these scenes with handheld cameras and quick cuts to give you an idea of how frantic the scene is. As Alexander is a second degree black belt, she (yes, I said she) knows as much about a scene like that as anyone. Hunnam is very charismatic as Pete, and his shaved head and relationship with Matt can easily remind someone of Fight Club, but it doesn't revel in the violence, showing that friendships are strong in any environment, however objectionable.

The story does take some twists and turns and everyone seems to finally find their conscience in the end, but this is a pretty compelling film throughout, and an excellent first feature outing by Alexander, who should be on her way to becoming an excellent director of action films. I'd say this is probably a B to a B+.