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Friday, September 30, 2005
'Hooligans' is yet another predictable gang film
Lexi Alexander's dive into England's football hooligan culture promises a lively romp through a subculture so alien that the street lingo and accented speech becomes a foreign language. Like its hero, Matt (Elijah Wood), we are tossed headlong into a gang of pub-dwelling, street-fighting football fanatics (a "firm," in their lingo) whose love of the game is eclipsed only by a passion for busting the heads of rival club fans.
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Wrongly expelled for his roommate's drug habit, disgraced Harvard journalism student Matt jets off to London to commiserate with his sister and ends up in the company of her husband's hooligan brother, Pete (Charlie Hunnam).
The initially reluctant Pete initiates the shy, retiring college boy into the ranks of his brawling buddies. Matt is addicted by the adrenaline boost and is reborn as the fearless Yank in the toughest firm in England.
You expect these guys to be on the dole or getting by on odd jobs, but surprisingly they hold down professional jobs and careers in their everyday lives, reverting to bullying street thugs under the influence of game-day excitement. The potential contradictions of this split personality is frustratingly unexplored.
The film becomes a mess of romanticized notions of street honor and camaraderie in combat, pushed into hollow melodrama by a plot mired in revenge, jealousy, double crosses and secret pasts dredged up just in time for a deadly (and utterly meaningless) rematch rumble.
Alexander attempts to simmer the entire culture down to a few simple ideas and ironies, and then has the nerve to create a happy ending out of Matt's near-fatal flirtation with hooliganism. It becomes simply another banal gang film so familiar and predictable you have to wonder why so much potential is wasted on such a confused dramatic mess.
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