Green Street
Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood) is a Journalist major at Harvard, when a stash of cocaine is found he takes the rap for it even though the drugs actually belong to his room mate Jeremy Van Holden (Terence Jay). Matt decides to move to London to live with his estranged sister Shannon (Claire Forlani) and her husband Steve (Marc Warren). It isn’t long before Matt meets Pete (Charlie Hunnam) and gets....
The Movie:
Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood) is a Journalist major at Harvard, when a stash of cocaine is found he takes the rap for it even though the drugs actually belong to his room mate Jeremy Van Holden (Terence Jay). Matt decides to move to London to live with his estranged sister Shannon (Claire Forlani) and her husband Steve (Marc Warren). It isn’t long before Matt meets Pete (Charlie Hunnam) and gets pulled into the world of hooliganism.
Matt finds out that Pete is the head of a “firm” called Green Street Elite who look for fights with rival football (of the English kind) “fans”. Matt himself gets a taste for the violence and gets more and more involved with the GSE (Green Street Elite). Then as things continue, West Ham are set to play their biggest rivals (Millwall) and things are set for a devastating climax.
Review:
Green Street, Green Street Hooligans or Hooligans (depending on what you want to call it) is female Director Lexi Alexander’s third foray into movies. The previous two efforts way back in 2002 include a movie called Fool Proof which no-one seems to have seen, and a film called Johnny Flynton which is a short, 37 minute, movie about a struggling boxer, both in the ring and in his home. This movie was Oscar nominated and gave Lexi the exposure she needed to make Green Street.
My first thoughts before receiving the film to review was that it would be interesting to see how Elijah Wood (Matt Buckner) comes across as a hooligan, after all his boyish almost angelic looks do not immediately spring to mind as being the best for this role. However looking back at Sin City where he played the murderous Kevin so well it may well not be the casting mismatch that I initially feared.
Then after watching the first 10 or 15 minutes it dawned on me that one of the points of the film was to show how easy it is for someone who would not normally get involved with gang violence to get pulled into its grasp, and that you have not got to be a psychotic tough guy (although I am sure that they are in there too) to be a member of a firm. Indeed the film shows members of the gang in there places of work and with members of their family. Albeit brief montages but those images serve to show us that these are indeed everyday people who outside of football are holding down regular jobs and lives. Showing these scenes humanises the people in our eyes.
The other main point of the film is about friendship, trust and betrayal and even though it is in an environment where most of us would not want to be (violence), the rules are still the same. We would all like to think that our friends would be there for us, and that they would fight our corner should the need arise, and not betray us.
There were a couple of points that didn’t sit right with me. I will create a thread in the forums to discuss those as they would spoil some major moments of the film, but one annoying aspect I will mention is some of the camera work during fight scenes. They seemed to have been filmed on a handheld camera, which I don’t mind, it gives the fights that gritty feeling and you feel that you are in the action. However as well as the normal camera movement that you get using a handheld the camera seemed to jump up and down quite rapidly and it stopped me concentrating on the film. But that said the fight scenes were quite violent at times and I think the hiring of current and ex-members of the inner city firm (ICF) as advisers paid dividends on realism on the fight scenes.
Overall I thought Green Street was a pretty good movie, I felt it to be a realistic portrayal of the subject matter although as I have never been involved in that scene I maybe totally wrong, but to me it felt realistic and that’s good enough for me. The only downside being a weak bunch of extras.
Picture:
No problems at all with the picture quality on my setup, I could detect no enhancements or grain and the blacks and shadows were nice and deep. The colour palette seemed quite cool in a way that I associate with films of this genre shot in the UK.
Sound:
A mixed bag on the sound front, the DD5.1 track was clear and used all the speakers for music, but effects were few and far between, keeping mainly to the centre channel.
Extras:
Interviews:
Elijah wood from Hobbit to Hooligan :
A short interview with Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam and Lexi Alexander talk about him (Elijah) wanting to do the movie, and a few snippets on how he became involved.
Standing your Ground :
A short interview revolving around some of the fight scenes and fight training, including a quick chat with the fight co-ordinator who used to choreograph fight scenes on Chuck Norris movies.
A clear direction: Lexi Alexander :
A little bit on the director. Apparently she was kick boxing champion for two years consecutively and had been involved or had known gang members in Germany. There is a little of the backslapping suckup that annoys me in these interviews.
Making of
This is becoming more of an abused term. In a “making of” I expect to see some footage of how they made the movie, maybe how they choreographed some of the large fight scenes, or even how they overcome the difficulties of filming in a stadium. Sadly no, this is another short interview that tells us nothing.
Other extras include the obligatory trailers we have a music video, there is no commentary on the disk.
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