Amazon Review
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This review is for: The Football Factory
As I travelled across London in the "tube" one Saturday in the early 70's, the train stopped at a station In East Ham. To the bemusement of the existing passengers the people who boarded the cars were "fans" of the London Football team West Ham United. Characteristically these fans wore the affected uniform of the day, skinhead haircuts, rolled up jeans held up by braces, or as you would understand the term, suspenders, black crombie overcoats and the ubiquitous white t-shirt. They were off to watch their team play at home and euphemistically, for a bit of bovver, the nickname of their boots, Doctor Martens. They were loud and loutish on the train jeering and picking on anyone who was not white and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when they disembarked.

Jump forward thirty years or so and some things have changed while others have not. Football grounds have demolished the terraces and the white working class males have been usurped by the middle classes who are the only ones who can afford the seats. The manic fans have changed too. Whereas once they were mindless gangs bored out of their minds and easy prey for neo-Nazi groups, the serious troublemakers have organised the firms which charaterize some of soccer's premier league fans and who are identified by British police and deterred from following Engk=land overseas.

Whereas the story of the seventies was told in short novels with the imaginative titles of 'Skinhead' followed later by 'Suedehead' and other similar titles, today we have the Football Factory.

This is a tense, gripping story which induces a feeling of fear for the less worldly viewer. It has an all too real sense of reality about it as anyone with experience with living in a major British city will tell you. Not for the first time has a British movie shocked the viewer with such language and mindless brutality. Not for the first time has a British movie exposed the alienation of disaffected British youth, although those movies were more common in Mrs. Thatcher's day than under the Blair regime. Indeed this movie is an attack on the politics of Blair although the overt references here are subdued in volume. The tensions between the old and new generations are highlighted by the superb performance of Dudley Sutton although this was spoilt at the end when the central character awakes in a hospital bed after a major beating to find himself next to Sutton whp plays his grandfather. Given the distance between the two incidents which led them to being in the hospital in the first place it is extremely unlikely that they would have even been in the same hospital never mind the same ward.

This does not detract from the movie which feels almost like a documentary never mind a drama. The plot is rather thin given the subject matter but the result is a microcosm of the life of members of one of these firms and it is clear from my own experience that the researchers have done a very thorough job.

As a movie this is an excellent piece of work although I suspect that the civil authorities in the US will have serious reservations about it's screening and general release on DVD.

Rather as entertainment, people should understand the seriousness of the subject matter being shown on their screens. There are many lessons to be drawn on both sides of the Atlantic about the way in which our societies are developing in the light of the existance of organisations such as these. But on a cautionary note, the firms of the movie are not as widespread and football matches are not dangerous to visit, in general but the casual visitor might want to do some homework before they go to one.

Five stars.