Green Street is another in a series of British football hooligan films that are effective for all the obvious banal reasons but, despite their pluses, are ultimately flawed.
The film begins with somewhat ham-handed way of introducing the central character: Matt, played by Elijah Wood, is a Harvard journalism student; he is the top of his class, of course, and his he is naïve beyond description. Being the nice guy he is, he takes the fall for his cocaine-addicted room-mate and is expelled for it. Without telling his neglectful father, he travels to London to live with his sister who is married to an ex-football hooligan and whose brother is now the leader of his old firm. After several of England's finest alcoholic beverages he is taken to the football by his idiot cousin, Pete. After the match Pete and the Firm go to fight a rival firm and Matt goes back to his sister's house. Along the way, the rival Firm start a fight with Matt and just in the nick of time, Pete's firm turn up. Needless to say there is a fight between the two firms and Matt quickly joins in and enjoys what he becomes a part of. The film progresses along steadily and Matt becomes somewhat of a notorious figure within the Firm. After some profound life lessons and his brother-in-law is killed, Matt decides to return to America and seeks revenge on his former rich-kid college room-mate. The ending scene is so awkward and laughable that I won't go into detail of describing it, in fact this is the highlight of the film, simply because it is so painful to watch.
Apart from it's at times laughable plot, Green Street also has some rather weak dialogue and almost cartoonish characters in it. Unsurprisingly, the film has several instances of Cockney rhyming slang in it, which is inevitably are followed by an agonising conversation between characters on what they mean. As an Englishman I often find scenes like this embarrassing, simply because they're not even carried with a sense of irony. They're so void of humour and self-reflexivity that it wears itself down to simply being painful to watch. Aside from the rhyming slang, I often find with contemporary British films such as these, that the dialogue feels very under-developed and first drafted, and the more “emotional” scenes such as those between Matt and his father or Pete and his brother seem so unrehearsed and insincere that it's difficult to tell if they've actually been scripted or not.
The major flaw with Green Street is that the casting is so unusual that it's difficult to actually accept the film as a serious reflection of British Hooliganism. Apart from the older hooligans of the rival Millwall Firm, the other actors are too fresh-faced and essentially don't look weathered enough to be taken seriously as football hooligans. After having watched the film in its entirety, I still can't understand why Elijah Wood was cast in that role, his actual physique and his facial features don't carry him well enough for such a “tough guy” role. If you compare him to other actors in the film, he is noticeably shorter and less built, facially he is also a lot thinner and his eyes are much larger and doughy than everyone else's. There's nothing more painful to watch than a bumbling Englishman and the same can be said for watching the bumbling American. On the other hand though, Elijah Wood can be argued that he is perfect for that naïve, young and inexperienced type of character, which is true. However, this is only true in some of his earlier work. For example, in Lord of the Rings, Everything is Illuminated and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he works perfectly, not that these films can be compared on any other level than this, of course. In Green Street however, he stands out too much and it seems too unconvincing.
However, for all its flaws, Green Street does have one or two passably admirable qualities. Firstly it touches upon issues that to a non-British audience, are unknown. Alcoholism being one of the more notable issues, violence of course being the more blatant one. My only problem with films this bland discussing serious issues as alcoholism is that I feel they are actually unaware of the issues they're discussing until after the end credits have finished. I further argue it would never have noticed them at all, unless critics and writers explain this to them.
The other admirable quality of the film is that it at the end, nothing has been resolved and none of the characters have learnt anything. There is no remorse or regret, simply destructive ignorance. However, again such nihilistic characters and sociopathic behaviour is something that weak writers are unaware of until they are being critiqued.
Unlike other 'hooligan' films such as Nick Love's bumbling, The Football Factory and Alan Clarke's actually impressive and disturbing, The Firm, Green Street has too many flaws and problems and not enough actual dare to be taken seriously. Ultimately it becomes something that fails to show sociological problems such as violence in a unique and alarming way. British realism films are a major part of British cinema and cinema as a whole and Green Street is one that can easily be left out as an example of this.
