Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

beorhhouse I reckon this film shows the world of the football hooligan. Football fans were a bit different in Ireland where hurling is the national sport and so garners most of the excitement. I like this film for the humanity, not being at all a sports fan myself.

mharah There must be something redeeming about British football, but I have yet to find it. Media representations, both factual and fictional, seem largely concerned with bad behavior by young (and not so young) males. (To be fair, male American football fans aren't a whole lot better, just less violent.} Elijah Wood portrays Matt, a young American student at Harvard who is falsely accused of drug-dealing and expelled. That plot gets lost early on, but it does get him to London, where he bunks with his sister (Claire Forlani, a Brit, herself playing an American), now married to a Brit. Her brother-in-law, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), a football hooligan, is also on the scene. He is delegated to help Matt adjust to life in London, an assignment Pete is initially not thrilled about. Events spiral downhill from there. Wood is well-cast as the straight arrow Harvard boy who (for whatever reason) takes the fall for his well-connected, politically ambitious, drug dealer roommate. He is thrust into the violent Hooligan culture of London and takes to it. Hunnam, who has been criticized for his accent, realizes that film is an international commodity, and English is the language of commercially successful films. Actors have to be understood everywhere, not just locally. Most of his mates don't get that, and it makes much of the dialogue problematic. Forlani is given little to do and does little with it. This could have been a brilliant film; Wood always has the potential to make his vehicles be so. But it does not achieve that goal, and British football is the culprit. It is hard to sympathize with anything which finds its inspiration in a sport typified by the unruly behavior of its advocates.

katumus Seriously though :) I'm feeling a little embarrassed after watching this awful movie haha. It was like watching a bunch of little angry ADHD kids fighting because they got their toys taken away. Apparently fighting for stupid reasons and looking like whacko baboons "look at me look at me" is somehow cool and important?Yes. Because that makes sense :)Intentionally choosing to fight and put your life in danger to prove your the toughest soccer gang in the neighborhood doesn't make ANYONE manly. I was hoping they'd grow up by the end of the movie.Nope. Aaah haha waste of time!

Kalle_it The movie get so many things wrong or depicts them in such a hackneyed way it's hard to take it seriously or to fathom where all the raving reviews came from.Apparently one of the most violent firms in English football have no qualms about letting in a preppy American student with zero credentials and negative knowledge about football...But that's fine, because those hooligans aren't terrible people when not dealing with football... One of them is an airline pilot, another one has the odd position of History AND P.E. teacher at a primary school (unrelated subjects, but go figure... those pesky London schools) and he's even allowed to have random strangers play with/give lectures to his kids...Alas, all good things come to an end when the jealous henchman decides it's time to betray his pals and strikes a deal (for what?) with the leader of their/his fiercest and most deranged rivals... Things take a turn for the worse, the traitor has another change of heart and comes back for the save.Frodo can now go back to the U.S., a tougher man, but also more mature and fair, because that's the lesson he learned while bonding with a bunch of friendly psychopaths in London.Last, but surely not least, the hooligans scene depicted in the movie would have vaguely been credible in the mid 80s, with the bleak neighbourhoods, the stereotypical "working class England" setting and, mainly, the complete absence of stadium security that has been enforced since English Football has become a multi-millionaire business that can't be disrupted by a bunch of maladjusted thugs.P.S. The scene where one of the GSE mocks the rival fans on the pitch dressed as a steward (or being one?!) sums it up pretty well... In contemporary football you couldn't pull it off, not even on the crappiest amateur field, let alone at a Premier League game. You'd not even get close to the stands and you'd be filmed by security cameras from 10 different angles. And no more stadium for you... But apparently the movie takes place in an alternate dimension where no such things exist.