Green Street Hooligans (2005)

Elijah Wood
Charlie Hunnam
Claire Forlani
Marc Warren
Henry Goodman
Terence Jay

Directed by Lexi Alexander

Plot: Expelled unfairly from Harvard, an American undergraduate, Matt Bucker flees to England to his sister's home. Once there, he is befriended by her charming and dangerous brother-in-law, Pete Dunham, and introduced to the underworld of British football hooliganism. Matt learns to 'stand his ground' through a friendship that develops against the backdrop of this secret and often violent world.

Review: I didn’t know much about this film, other than an interview I had heard from Elijah Wood, so I didn’t expect too much. To my surprise the movie is excellent. Before getting too much into this review, I want to say I was never a big Elijah Wood fan. He was good in Lord of the Rings, but it wasn’t until his silent performance in Sin City that I became a fan.

The storyline is basic, but very interesting. The performances are great all around. It is obvious that the director made sure to make every character was important in their own way no matter how small their part was. What makes this film so great is the realism it portrays for another country. Since I am not much of a traveler, I enjoy seeing films about other cultures and this one displayed a whole other side of England I didn’t even know existed. The fight scenes, and there are a lot of them, are believable and very well put together. Although characters are more or less thugs, you find yourself rooting for them and understanding why they do the things they do. The movie is brutally brilliant and more proof to me that Elijah Wood is a great actor.


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