Green Street (Hooligans) on DVD

Description

After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Elijah Wood could've opted for further big budget epics, but took a sharp left turn with this better-than-average B-movie. Released just after Everything is Illuminated, another offbeat entry, Wood plays journalism student Matt Buckner. In the prologue, he's expelled from Harvard when his over-privileged roommate sets him up to take the fall for his own misdeeds. With nowhere to go, Matt decides to visit his sister, Shannon (Claire Forlani), in London. He's already got a chip on his shoulder when he falls under the sway of Shannon's brother-in-law, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), head of West Ham's football "firm," the Green Street Elite. Matt soon gets caught up in their thuggish antics—to tragic effect. In her feature debut, German-born Lexi Alexander makes a mostly convincing case for the attractions of violence to the emotionally vulnerable, as opposed to the emotionally numb pugilists of the more satirical Fight Club. Unlike David Fincher (by way of Chuck Palahniuk), she plays it straight, except for the stylised fight sequences. Consequently, humour is in short supply, but the young Brit cast, especially Leo Gregory as the surly Bovver, is charismatic and Wood makes his character as believable as possible, i.e. he may seem miscast, but that's the point. Although there's no (direct) correlation between the two, Green Street makes a fine taster for Bill Buford's Among the Thugs, the ultimate dissection of the hooligan mentality. Fennessy Product Description Hard-hitting football hooligan drama, starring Elijah Wood. Matt Buckner (Wood) is a Harvard journalism student who has just been expelled from college. Drifting across the Atlantic to London to stay with relatives, Matt meets Pete Dunham (Charlie Hunnam), the leader of a local West Ham 'firm', and finds himself gradually drawn into the violent underworld of football hooliganism. Meanwhile, Pete's oldest friend and second in command of the firm, Bovver (Leo Gregory), starts to resent Mat's new position in the group and secretly plots to take him down.