Like many insomniacs, my late-night TV habits are somewhat…eclectic. Flipping through channels in the wee hours, I often land on movie channels, sometimes catching classics like The Ring. But there’s one film, specifically, that holds an inexplicable grip on me whenever it appears on the screen: Green Street, or as it’s known in the US, Green Street Hooligans. Despite having seen parts of it countless times, scattered across numerous sleepless nights, I’ve somehow pieced together several complete viewings.
Now, let’s be clear from the outset: I’m not particularly drawn to the football hooligan genre. My forays into others have been brief and largely unsuccessful, and the vast literature dedicated to the exploits of football firms on British trains has remained untouched by me. Yet, there’s a bizarre, almost magnetic awfulness to Green Street that keeps me coming back.
Prepare yourself, because we’re diving deep into spoiler territory. In fact, we’re going to dissect the entire convoluted plot of Green Street Hooligans, as its sheer absurdity is central to both its terribleness and its strange allure. Imagine Frodo Baggins, Elijah Wood himself, as Matt, a brilliant Harvard student unfairly expelled after taking the fall for someone else’s drug possession. He seeks refuge in London 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, surprise, surprise, leads West Ham’s notorious football firm, the Green Street Elite. After navigating initial suspicion and proving his loyalty by enduring a brutal beating from a rival firm, Matt is welcomed into the GSE fold.
But plot twist! Bovver (Leo Gregory), another GSE member, consumed by jealousy, accuses Matt of being an undercover journalist. Steve, somehow uncovering Bovver’s treachery, rushes to the Green Street Elite’s pub to warn Matt. And here’s the kicker: respectable Steve is revealed to be “The Major,” the legendary former leader of the GSE, who abandoned the violent lifestyle.
Take a moment to process that, because the madness doesn’t stop there.
Steve convinces the GSE of Matt’s innocence, leaving a humiliated Bovver to seek out Tommy Hatcher (Geoff Bell), the ruthless leader of Millwall’s firm. Bovver spills the beans about the GSE pub location, setting up an ambush. Hatcher and his crew attack, and in the chaos, Steve is stabbed. Shannon, in a baffling display of logic, declares she’s leaving Steve, unable to tolerate his return to violence. The irony is truly Shakespearean – he was only trying to protect her brother! The film culminates in a massive clash between the Millwall and West Ham firms, to which Shannon, inexplicably, drives with her baby son. Pete is tragically killed by Hatcher, and in a moment of forced catharsis, both sides realize the utter futility of their violence – Romeo and Juliet meets East London, with a pint of lager. Matt, armed with his newfound hooligan street cred, returns to the US and intimidates the guy who set him up with the drugs. Roll credits.
The Compelling Awfulness: Why Green Street Hooligans is a Guilty Pleasure
So, why does this cinematic train wreck hold such a strange appeal?
Part of it is the sheer audacity of West Ham United proudly promoting a film starring Elijah Wood, partially shot at their beloved Upton Park stadium. It seems no one bothered to inform them it was a film glorifying, however clumsily, football hooliganism.
Then there’s the casting of Frodo Baggins as a football hooligan. Never has the supposed menace of English football firms been so utterly unconvincing. It’s like casting a hobbit as a Viking berserker.
And let’s not forget Charlie Hunnam’s accent. Upon my first viewing, I genuinely believed he was a foreign actor, perhaps from a small Belgian town, attempting Cockney. His accent is so uniquely terrible it transcends even Dick Van Dyke’s infamous attempt. He’s actually from Newcastle! While my own Geordie accent isn’t award-winning, no one has ever paid me to inflict it on an audience for two hours.
The character names are another source of unintentional comedy. Bovver! It’s almost begging for supporting characters named “Pwopah Norty” and “You Slaaaag.” The commitment to caricature is truly something to behold.
Shannon’s motivations defy all logic and reason. No sane person would react as she does. While marital discord over a return to hooliganism is understandable, her complete failure to grasp that Steve was stabbed protecting her dim-witted brother is baffling. And taking her baby to a massive football brawl? If this were a mother from a low-income neighborhood, social services would be involved faster than you can say “Green Street Elite.”
Green Street Hooligans also suffers from delusions of grandeur. It aspires to be more than just another football hooligan flick. Surprisingly, some US reviewers, including the late Roger Ebert, actually fell for this pretense, viewing it as a serious commentary on social issues, akin to Alan Clarke’s The Firm. They seemed oblivious to its true nature as a tawdry exploitation film capitalizing on the late 90s/early 2000s hooligan movie trend. Perhaps the lack of US release for The Football Factory shielded them from Green Street‘s cinematic DNA.
Yet, amidst the cinematic garbage, glimmers of genuine talent emerge, primarily in the performances of the villains. Leo Gregory as Bovver is disturbingly believable as a man radiating unpredictable malevolence, the kind of person who makes you carefully choose your words. (Though, typecasting is clearly alive and well, as IMDB lists one of his upcoming roles as “Slasher” in The Hooligan Factory). Geoff Bell’s Tommy Hatcher is equally chilling – the scene where he murders Pete while singing “He’s only a poor little Hammer” is genuinely horrifying, and not just due to the violence itself.
In conclusion, I am absolutely not recommending you watch Green Street Hooligans. Please, do not watch it expecting a cinematic masterpiece. It is, objectively, terrible. My enjoyment of it is a personal quirk, and likely won’t translate to your viewing experience. However, if a football hooligan ever kidnaps your family and forces you to choose between watching Green Street and Green Street Hooligans 2: Stand Your Ground, choose the original. Because Green Street Hooligans 2 is a film for which the word “pleasure” could never, under any circumstances, be used.
