Elijah Wood Goes Gangbusters in London
Writer and director Lexi Alexander's Green Street Hooligans has spunk. Juiced by her eagerness to depict what she apparently learned while living among British soccer gangs, somehow the picture, a realistic look at a thug's life and what it means to be educated, transcends its faults.
Elijah Wood plays Matt, who is expelled from Harvard's journalism school when his stoner roommate sets him up. Matt's father, a well-connected journalist on assignment in Afghanistan, is unavailable to offer guidance, so Matt transports himself to London, where his sister (Claire Forlani) lives with her British husband (Marc Warren) and a newborn he has never met.
Through implausible circumstances that are the movie's sore point, Matt is drawn into the underworld of Brit football teams and their roaming gangs, a band of thugs who spend their down time—each has a respectable job—beating rivals to a pulp. These bad boys are known as the Green Street Elite.
Their leader (Charlie Hunnam) takes the movie to a higher level. Looking like Heath Ledger with a buzz cut, he is Green Street's fast-talking top dog Pete, and, before Matt can unpack, Pete lures the unwanted American into London's mean streets.
Tattooed Pete swaggers around causing trouble and cheering his sports team—West Ham—at games, trying to raise the gang's stature (they call it a "firm" over there). He is aided by an assortment of surly types, including a swarthy fellow who has Judas written all over him. The gang has rules, of course, and among these is the commandment that thou shalt not associate with the dreaded journalist, because the hoodlums don't like what they read in the British tabloids. Without knowing much about Matt, Pete, who's game for turning pint-sized Matt into a mini-me, takes a liking to the young American, whom he inducts into the gang.
Matt guzzles beer, slurs his speech and finally feels like he belongs. He learns how to fight, too, in a rivalry that elicits a good war strategy—taking the fight to the enemy's turf with a show of unyielding force (what a concept, Mr. President). Only a gang is a gang. Not glorified so much as examined, and not too closely at that, Alexander re-inserts the college tale exactly where it belongs, transforming a pansy into a man who learns what it means to fight back.
This is not a pity party and the fights, language and action are gritty, rough and tumble, though fistfights are impossible to follow. Game battles and intra-brethren jealousies culminate in a showdown where everyone—including a vengeful old rival—shows what they can do in a pinch.
Elijah Wood tries to make us forget Frodo, and whether he succeeds depends on one's fealty to that gigantic trilogy (mine is zilch). His Matt is aggressive and, if he fights like a ferocious kitten, he throws a few punches, too. As Pete, Hunnam gets the showier role, and he milks it like he's playing Brian's Song, protecting the pack, initiating the American and locking horns with anyone who gets in his way. Forlani as Matt's sister cries a lot, and she is more interested in tickets to the theater than in the fact that her younger brother has gone from Harvard to hooliganism on her watch.
It's probably softer in spots than real gangs, but nobody wants to sit and watch blood clots form. For a spirited B-movie, Green Street Hooligans is fine.
Elijah Wood plays Matt, who is expelled from Harvard's journalism school when his stoner roommate sets him up. Matt's father, a well-connected journalist on assignment in Afghanistan, is unavailable to offer guidance, so Matt transports himself to London, where his sister (Claire Forlani) lives with her British husband (Marc Warren) and a newborn he has never met.
Through implausible circumstances that are the movie's sore point, Matt is drawn into the underworld of Brit football teams and their roaming gangs, a band of thugs who spend their down time—each has a respectable job—beating rivals to a pulp. These bad boys are known as the Green Street Elite.
Their leader (Charlie Hunnam) takes the movie to a higher level. Looking like Heath Ledger with a buzz cut, he is Green Street's fast-talking top dog Pete, and, before Matt can unpack, Pete lures the unwanted American into London's mean streets.
Tattooed Pete swaggers around causing trouble and cheering his sports team—West Ham—at games, trying to raise the gang's stature (they call it a "firm" over there). He is aided by an assortment of surly types, including a swarthy fellow who has Judas written all over him. The gang has rules, of course, and among these is the commandment that thou shalt not associate with the dreaded journalist, because the hoodlums don't like what they read in the British tabloids. Without knowing much about Matt, Pete, who's game for turning pint-sized Matt into a mini-me, takes a liking to the young American, whom he inducts into the gang.
Matt guzzles beer, slurs his speech and finally feels like he belongs. He learns how to fight, too, in a rivalry that elicits a good war strategy—taking the fight to the enemy's turf with a show of unyielding force (what a concept, Mr. President). Only a gang is a gang. Not glorified so much as examined, and not too closely at that, Alexander re-inserts the college tale exactly where it belongs, transforming a pansy into a man who learns what it means to fight back.
This is not a pity party and the fights, language and action are gritty, rough and tumble, though fistfights are impossible to follow. Game battles and intra-brethren jealousies culminate in a showdown where everyone—including a vengeful old rival—shows what they can do in a pinch.
Elijah Wood tries to make us forget Frodo, and whether he succeeds depends on one's fealty to that gigantic trilogy (mine is zilch). His Matt is aggressive and, if he fights like a ferocious kitten, he throws a few punches, too. As Pete, Hunnam gets the showier role, and he milks it like he's playing Brian's Song, protecting the pack, initiating the American and locking horns with anyone who gets in his way. Forlani as Matt's sister cries a lot, and she is more interested in tickets to the theater than in the fact that her younger brother has gone from Harvard to hooliganism on her watch.
It's probably softer in spots than real gangs, but nobody wants to sit and watch blood clots form. For a spirited B-movie, Green Street Hooligans is fine.
