Insomnia is a frequent visitor in my life. When sleep evades me, I often find myself channel surfing late at night, hoping to stumble upon something to capture my restless mind. More often than not, I land on a movie channel, and if luck is on my side, Green Street (or Green Street Hooligans as it’s known in the US) is playing. Despite owning the DVD and having access to countless streaming services, there’s something uniquely compelling about encountering this film randomly on TV. I’ve caught snippets of it countless times, never really watching it from start to finish in one go, but piecing it together in chunks of 30 minutes here and there. Yet, through these fragmented viewings, I’ve somehow managed to experience the full, chaotic journey of Green Street multiple times over.
Now, let’s be clear, I’m not particularly drawn to the football hooligan genre. I’ve sampled a few others, finding them largely unengaging, and the numerous books on the subject of InterCity train-based exploits have never piqued my interest. But there’s a certain mesmerizing trainwreck quality to Green Street that keeps me coming back. It’s a film that operates on a level of glorious absurdity, and a significant part of its strange allure lies in its spectacularly convoluted plot.
So, brace yourselves, because I’m about to dive deep into spoiler territory. In fact, consider this your official spoiler warning: I’m going to dissect the entire plot of Green Street, because its sheer craziness is integral to both its awfulness and its surprising appeal. Imagine, if you will, Elijah Wood – yes, Frodo Baggins himself – playing Matt, a brilliant Harvard student who gets unjustly expelled after taking the fall for someone else’s drug possession. Seeking refuge, he travels to London to stay with his sister, Shannon (Claire Forlani), and her husband, Steve (Marc Warren). There, he falls under the wing of Steve’s brother, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), who, in a twist of fate, happens to be the leader of West Ham’s notorious football firm, the Green Street Elite (GSE). After some initial suspicion and a loyalty test involving a brutal beating from a rival crew, Matt earns his place within the GSE ranks.
But plot twists abound! Bovver (Leo Gregory), another GSE member, consumed by jealousy towards Matt, plants a seed of doubt in Pete’s mind, suggesting Matt is an undercover journalist. Steve, in a moment of convenient plot advancement (the exact mechanics of which escape my memory), uncovers Bovver’s treachery and rushes to the GSE’s pub to warn Matt. And here’s the kicker – prepare for the big reveal – the seemingly respectable Steve is actually “the Major,” the legendary, feared former leader of the GSE, who supposedly left the violence behind.
Take a moment to process that. Deep breaths. Because there’s still more.
Steve, utilizing his past influence, manages to convince the GSE that Matt is not a threat. A humiliated and vengeful Bovver then scurries off to Tommy Hatcher (Geoff Bell), the ruthless leader of Millwall’s rival firm, tipping him off about the GSE’s location, setting up an ambush at the pub. Hatcher and his Millwall crew attack, and in the ensuing chaos, Steve is tragically stabbed – an act of violence that prompts Shannon to declare she’s leaving him, disgusted by his return to his violent past. The irony is, of course, completely lost on her as Steve was trying to protect her brother! The film climaxes with a massive showdown between the Millwall and West Ham firms, a brawl inexplicably attended by Shannon, who brings her infant son along for the ride. In this chaotic melee, Pete meets his end at the hands of Hatcher. In a moment of profound (and utterly unearned) realization, both sides suddenly grasp the senselessness of their actions – it’s like a football hooligan version of Romeo and Juliet, but with added lager. Matt, armed with his newfound hooligan “credentials,” returns to the US and, in a final, bizarre scene, uses his GSE reputation to intimidate the guy who framed him. Roll credits.
So, after that rollercoaster of a plot summary, you might be wondering: why on earth do I find this film so enjoyable?
Firstly, there’s the sheer audacity of West Ham United proudly promoting Elijah Wood’s starring role in a movie partially filmed at their Upton Park ground, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was a film about people violently assaulting each other. The disconnect is hilarious.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, we have Frodo Baggins as a football hooligan. Never has the supposed terror of English football grounds been portrayed with such utter lack of conviction. Elijah Wood, bless him, gives it his all, but the image of Frodo Baggins leading a charge of football hooligans is inherently, and delightfully, absurd.
Then there’s Charlie Hunnam’s accent. Oh, Charlie Hunnam’s accent. Upon my initial viewing, I genuinely believed he was a foreign actor, perhaps from a small town in the Benelux region, due to the sheer bewildering nature of his attempt at a Cockney accent. It’s a dialectal landscape even Dick Van Dyke would fear to tread. But no, it turns out he hails from Newcastle. While my own Geordie accent may not be award-winning, at least nobody has ever paid me to perform one for hours on end.
And let’s not forget the character names. Bovver. It’s almost Shakespearean in its subtlety. One can only lament the absence of characters named Pwopah Norty and You Slaaaag to complete the ensemble.
Shannon’s motivations, or rather, her complete lack thereof, deserve their own analysis. No rational, sentient human being would likely share her thought processes. Many spouses would be unhappy about their husbands returning to football hooliganism, true. But why, in the name of all that is logical, does nobody point out to her that Steve was stabbed while trying to rescue her utterly clueless hobbit brother? And who in their right mind takes their infant child to a massive, potentially violent football firm showdown? By all means, attempt to be the second person to rescue your halfwit brother, but for the love of all that is holy, get a babysitter! This is the kind of scenario where one can’t help but point at the screen and declare: if that were a mother from a lower-income neighborhood, social services would descend upon her like a ton of bricks.
Despite its flaws, Green Street seems to harbor pretensions of being more than just another mindless hooligan flick. Surprisingly, a number of US reviewers, including the esteemed Roger Ebert, seemed to latch onto this aspect, interpreting Green Street as a serious exploration of a significant social issue, akin to Alan Clarke’s gritty masterpiece, The Firm. They seemed unaware that it was, in reality, another entry in the tawdry line of exploitation movies capitalizing on the late 90s and early 2000s fascination with “hoolie porn.” Perhaps the fact that The Football Factory, a far more representative example of the genre, never reached US shores contributed to this misinterpretation.
However, amidst the cinematic wreckage, there are fleeting moments where genuine talent flickers. Leo Gregory, as Bovver, delivers a disturbingly realistic portrayal of that unsettlingly unpredictable individual, the kind of person who makes you carefully choose your words, never quite sure how they’ll react. (Ironically, IMDB lists one of his upcoming roles as “Slasher” in The Hooligan Factory. Talk about typecasting.) Equally compelling is Geoff Bell’s Tommy Hatcher. The scene where he brutally beats Pete to death, while chillingly singing “He’s only a poor little Hammer,” is genuinely horrifying, and not just due to the violence itself.
Let me reiterate: I am absolutely not recommending you watch Green Street. Please, for your own sake, don’t watch it. It is, objectively, a terrible film. The fact that it brings me a certain perverse pleasure is no guarantee it will do anything for you. But, on the off-chance that a football hooligan ever kidnaps your family and forces you to choose between watching Green Street or Green Street Hooligans 2: Stand Your Ground, then, for the love of all that is holy, choose the original. Because the sequel? That is a film for which the word “pleasure” can never, ever be used.
