"The Firm" (1989) d/ Alan Clarke

You thought the British football hoolie movie reviews were over, are they fuck? Tonight's, in particular,  is Alan Clarke's take on the subject, a 1988 made-for-television affair starring a mustacchioed, maniacal Gary Oldman at his fanatic and frenetic best, and Philip Davis, who you can't have yet forgotten directed I.D., our previous football hoolie movie review, as his ponytailed, motor-vandalizing rival with a toothy grin. Interestingly, Oldman's on screen wife, Lesley Manville, was also his first wife in real life, leaving her thee months after his son Alfie was born, the same year Firm was debuted. Oldman leaned on his friend in Pennsylvania four years later, when he checked himself into Marworth, in Waverly Township (!),  for alcohol abuse. Twenty minutes away from my old place, you could have gone on the piss-up of your life, Gar, you daft cunt. In any case, on to the footie...


"You let a ponce with a pony tail do your motor." grumbles Dad.
Bex (Oldman) has got it fucking all, boys; a cushy gig selling real estate, a loving young wife and toddler son who can already say "Piss off!", a nice car, and nice flat...but he's still regularly beckoned to return to his parent's place, where his old bedroom is wallpapered with footie and newspaper clippings, and a hidden suitcase full of tools for clobbering blokes violently about the head and body, is tucked away in the wardrobe. He's the head of a firm called the I.C.C., or Inter City Crew (based on West Ham's infamous I.C.F.) that regularly butts heads (Bexy gives 'Manchester Kisses' to just about everybody, for any reason, the darling.) with a rival firm, the Buccaneers, as led by uber-blonde Yeti (Philip Davis) who's not only got the bottle to trash expensive cars and petrol bomb them on I.C.C. turf, he also sports Wayfarer sunglasses and a dork knob, on purpose. Bex is so obsessed with payback, that he fails to notice his infant son brushing his own gums with a Stanley knife while he's organizing future aggro on the phone. While his wife doesn't half understand her husband's need for "the buzz", his Harp-slurping father is on board, one hundred fifty percent, even taking Polaroids of the tooled up crew for them and encouraging his son to "go 'round and kick the bastard's head in", like he used to do, in his heyday.


"I'm nicknamed after a fictitious Himalayan snow beast.", quips Yeti (Philip Davis).
Bex dreams of the rival crews all united under a national banner, taking legendary bovver to all of Europe for the 1988 Championships, but a full-on war is escalating between them for leadership, with property vandalism, tile-cutter slashed faces, back alley scraps, and pry bars, sledgehammers, and baseball bats all being utilized to their full destructive capacity. While Sue (Lesley Manville) pleads with Bex to end the insanity, as he's not a common bootboy or thug, but a thirty year old man with a family, he refuses to listen, desperate to maintain order in his crew, even if it takes violence, and desperate to maintain the "buzz" that he can find nowhere else in his life. Ultimately, Bex and company descend on the Buccaneers' home pub with baseball bats, and bash the fuck out of everyone, whether they be a hooligan or an innocent woman having a pint a'. Having had the embarrassing fuck kicked out of him, Yeti surprisingly pulls a shooter and puts a fatal one into Bex. Later, we see representatives from all three crews drinking together, and remembering their late chum Bexy, whose untimely death has united them into the national firm that he'd always dreamed of...


"We need a commemorative bovver-ready Polaroid, don't we, lads?", shouts Bexy (Gary Oldman).
Initially, critics held mixed feelings about the violence in Clarke's film, as per usual, though it's widely acclaimed as a cult classic, and perhaps the most honest cinematic representation of football hoolies in Thatcher-era Britain, and after digging my region 2 copy out of the ol' library for the first time in a decade or longer (Cheers to Nigel of IFR), I'm not a disbeliever in that notion, by any means, and don't believe I ever have been, for the record. It's a brief but powerful work, thick with tense energy, conducted by a volatile performance from Oldman, at the top of his craft, three Wops and a strong recommendation may have never been an easier call than this. Still enjoy I.D. a bit more though, personally. It's gotta be the mustache.


"Where you blag that fucking shooter? The fucking Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester?"

"I.D." (1995) d/ Philip Davis

We'll leave beach towels and wrestling rings behind for the terraces of British football, where turf is staked, war is waged, and lives are sometimes lost in the fanatical melee. Tonight's review, is loosely based on Scotland Yard's attempt to infiltrate the I.C.F., official hooligans for West Ham Utd., though the film's club, Shadwell, is a fictitious nod to Millwall. The incediary lead, Reece Dinsdale, you'll probably remember from the recent Coronation Street series, though you may recall him from his earlier work in Threads (1984). Also along for aggro are Warren Clarke, no stranger to laying a boot in, himself, having portrayed Dim in A Clockwork Orange (1971), Sean Pertwee, in a crazy pair of two-tone jeans, and director Philip "Chalky" Davis of Quadrophenia (1979) fame even has a nice cameo here. Got your tool ready? It's jumpin' off...


"We know this is Rick Astley's tour bus then, send 'im out or we'll tip the bloody thing over!!!"
In 1980's Britain, four police officers are given an undercover mission to blend into Shadwell Town's firm of violent hooligans, affectionately nicknamed the "dogs", after the last group was sniffed out and nearly murdered, to try and i.d. the secret leaders behind the mindless weekend thugs. John (Reece Dinsdale) throws on a burgundy bomber and immerses himself in the role, portraying a functionally illiterate working class yob right down to the pint a'. His bespectacled superior, Trev (Richard Graham), isn't nearly as convincing, even when he's on the piss, running away from rucks, blurting useless Shadwell trivia, or groping the bartender, Lynda (Saskia Reeves), at the Dogs' headquarters, The Rock. Though all four are clearly enjoying their assignment, John's growing affinity for going for the gusto leaves him in hot water with his co-workers and girlfriend, Marie (Claire Skinner) (he drunkenly punches Trevor in the face and roughly screws Marie up against a wall), but he's the dog's bollocks to his new football mates, like the burly bat-wielding Bob (Warren Clarke), Martin (Sean Pertwee), and a dirty, toothless, quivering wretch named Gumbo (Lee Ross) who's barely competent enough to put the lids on pickles since he electrocuted himself.


"Bloody fake-looking tattoos?? Who's having you on, Dim!"
The deeper his obsession with football, he's filmed by police cameras during a bloody ruck and gets the team shield tattooed on his arse, the less he's able to cope with regular day-to-day existence, as his relationship with Marie dissolves when he's too busy listening to footie on the radio to pay attention to her on a beach getaway, and he comes to look at the old bill he's increasingly at odds with at the matches, with the same disdain that his rowdy peers do. He pays a drunken booty call to Lynda, and gives hilarious orgasm-face. Just as he gains the trust of higher ups in the firm, that deal in real crime and drugs beyond football punch ups, the entire operation is dismantled, with The Rock being shut down, and several minor arrests made. John, unable to cope with losing the adrenaline thrill of hooligan life, destroys his apartment, setting his things on fire in the street, destroys his locker at work, tearing the uniform he can no longer stand to see himelf in, and drunkenly confronts Marie's parents, before sitting down to a dirty, bloody bowl of dry corn flakes and cocaine and some smashed telly. After Trev is surprised to see Gumbo in an interrogation room for stealing a jar of pickles(!), he later spots John, heiling and marching with the National Front, with shaved head, Harrington, and scarlet downturned braces. He shoves Trevor away, claiming to be undercover on assignment, but we all know better than that.


"...aaaaaaand ker-splooosh goes the frosting from the squeeze-bag!"
Though Davis hasn't directed all that many features to date, he's acted in everything from Pink Floyd's The Wall (1982) and Howling V: The Rebirth (1989), to Alien 3(1992) and Doctor Who and Tales From the Crypt on television, where's he's been quite busy, indeed. Claire Skinner would turn up in Sleepy Hollow (1999), while Saskia Reeves worked with Lars von Trier on his controversial 2013 release, Nymphomaniac: Vol. I. Warren Clarke was seen most recently on the Chuggington series that ran four seasons, and Sean Pertwee is signed on to face more U.K. full moon-based horrors in Howl, scheduled for release some time next year. When it comes to movies about football hooliganism, some folks prefer Alan Clarke's The Firm (1989), which starred Gary Oldman, but as far as your pal, Wop, is concerned, this is the slightly better movie, more focused on the psychology of the mob mentality, and the allure it holds for people, than the sport itself. Three wops, and a strong recommendation.


"Did any of you lot see Kyle? He's about this tall..."