Green Street Hooligans

If you like movies involving street/pub brawls and proper football (soccer to us Yanks) this is the movie for you.

I saw this movie on the New Release wall at Hollywood Video and decided to Netflix it (we had free rental coupons at Hollywood…). I’ve become more of a fan of Elijah Wood over time, and the premise seemed promising.

The movie begins in London when two groups of men confront each other on opposite ends of a train track. They exchange insults and before you can even catch what is being said and decipher their accents, a fight breaks out. Then we’re introduced to Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood) - a promising, young journalist-in-training. We very quickly come to find out that Matt was framed and expelled from the prestigious Harvard University, only to learn that his roommate, son of a wealthy political family, set him up, as he hands Buckner an envelope with $10,000 as a “thank you.”

Rejecting the money at first, Buckner then decides to take the money and head to London to visit his sister. No sooner does he get there then his brother-in-law pays him a bunch of money to go out with his younger brother, Pete Dunham, to a football match. What Buckner experiences is a crash course in London street culture and the intricate details of Pubs and football.

It turns out, that Pete is the leader of the GSE (Green Street Elite) “firm” (a gang of violent football fans) that is loyal only to the West Ham United football team and the locale of which they live. Buckner soon learns the ropes of being in the GSE, the firm’s history, and hopeful future of having the best reputation of any firm in England. But that reputation comes at a price - blood spilt in the streets.

At the onset of his first fight - with the GSE and of his entire life - Matt is given this one rule from Pete: “You don’t run, not when you’re with us… You stand your ground and fight!”

From there, the movie is a speeding bullet of pints, blood, soccer, character development and a couple plot twists that leave you completely entertained. Elijah Wood’s character did sort of remind me of Edward Norton Jr. in Fight Club, a sissy at first, then a bad-ass as the movie progresses.

For a movie that didn’t hit theaters in the U.S., it was really good. Chances are I’ll buy this to add to my collection. The soundtrack was pretty damn good too, a mixture of rock and hip-hop.