Reviews

Sometimes movies are made to tell a broad, overarching story which is tied in to reality using various sub plots. Other times, movies are made about specific ideas or themes which have a story inserted into them, effectively using the story to carry the theme or idea. This movie does neither of these things well at all. In fact, it fails to hit anywhere near the mark.

In reading a lot of the other reviews for this movie, it's obvious that the English are bothered by two things: the accents and the way "hooliganism" is portrayed.

As for the accents, most of us are ignorant. In America, at least, accents don't typically play in to people's impressions of others. We have people with southern accents and New England accents, and that's about it. Now if perhaps there was an Englishman in the film attempting an American accent, we might be a little more aware of that, but on the whole, we don't make much of accents. If the movie had been made for viewing only in England, then of course, people would be totally within their right to be annoyed by the terrible accents. But the rest of the world in all likelihood didn't know the accents were bad, and quite frankly, probably didn't care.

"Hooliganism" isn't something we know anything about, either. As a person who has spent a lot of time reading about the exploits of people like Cass Pennant, Dave Courtney, the Headhunters, Naughty 40, etc., I found the whole movie to be humorous. It was written by a person with limited first-hand experience of firms for people who have even less of an idea about them. No, of course Frodo wouldn't just be able to step into the GSE (ICF) on his first trip to football. What's even more ridiculous is that for a movie which tries to highlight the camaraderie, trust, and respect between members of the firm, they sure had no issue taking on a completely unknown man in Elijah Wood and letting him run with the firm on his first day. "We're brothers, we rely on each other, and know how to back our mates up. We face pain and severe beatings together as a team and - what's that? Sure new guy, step right up and join out exclusive brotherhood."

This isn't a movie about "hooligans" anymore than it is a movie about a man learning to stand on his own feet. The story chafes at every turn, and even trying to suspend belief long enough to try to relate to these characters is too much. Wood is horrendously miscast to the point of satire. The average age of these lads is 4, and their firm isn't nearly big enough to be believable. The rhyming slang is abusively bad, etc. And here's wood, a Harvard student who apparently never seems to think twice about running with a firm - something most intellectuals would have a very hard time rationalizing. It just makes no sense, and in the end, we're left trying to decide if the movie was about lads playing up at football, or Frodo getting in touch with his inner yob and learning to take it like a man. Just disappointing.

This movie was somewhat tough to know how to take. On the one hand - as a movie about coming of age - it's a fairly straight-forward, effective film. Shaun's anger and depression about the death of his father fighting in the Falklands is slowly eating away at him, and his new skinhead friends don't help him learn to cope with that, but they do give him a distraction and a sense of belonging that he obviously craves. Shaun is easily influenced, and Woody becomes a type of father figure to him, helping him find his own place in the world around him.

On the other hand, though, the movie in very insular. Combo talks about the money and jobs lost to immigrants, but aside from the Falklands, there doesn't seem to be any real link between this group of skins and the outside world. They never seem to actually exist in the real world, other than the mob's trip to the National Front rally and when Woody's girlfriend heads to work. So when Combo decides to espouse his political points of view to the rest of the gang, it feels hollow and almost disjointed; here is this group of skinheads who never seem to work and do nothing except sit around, drink beer, smoke pot, and listen to records. And as Combo has spent the last several years in prison, he doesn't feel like someone who would be in the know about the political situation in England at the time.

However, the details of the movie are fairly accurate. The National Front did play a huge role in attracting skinheads to their cause in the 80s, and the fashions are pretty spot on, as is the music. Although I think that the movie doesn't make much of an effort to pander to the uninitiated. If you don't know skinhead culture, you're going to find yourself lost on occasion. But by and large, most of the movie can be understood and appreciated without knowledge of what it is to be skinhead. Overall a decent movie, if not a bit two dimensional.