The Football Factory (2004)

 

Director: Nick Love

Screenplay: AJ Lovell

Based on the novel by John King

Cast: Danny Dyer as Tommy Johnson; Frank Harper as Billy Bright; Tamer Hassan as Fred; Roland Manookian as Zeberdee; Neil Maskell as Rod; Dudley Sutton as Bill Farrell; Jamie Foreman as the Cabbie; Tony Denham as Harris; Calum MacNab as Raff; John Junkin as Albert Moss

Ephemeral Waves

 

Jesus, I was expecting cornflakes and a morning wank.

Produced at a time when the likes of FHM and Loaded magazines existed, for a young male demographic in the United Kingdom, post Danny Boyle's Trainspotting (199) adaptation, and produced by Rockstar Games, the British developer at the time when Grand Theft Auto was making waves post Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001) onwards, The Football Factory presents a contentious subject for a film about football (soccer) hooliganism. The opening credits play to this contentiousness with newspaper headlines, but the irony is that, returning to the film, it really is not about the beautiful game in the slightest. All the concerns of this promoting hooliganism from the time come to a film which merely mentions the sport, never shows onscreen games, and is more about a ritualistic world of fans of different teams getting together in an underpass to fight each other, all disillusioned and bored working class men with not much else to do.

My hostility when I first watched the film, back when I was in college at the late 2000s, the NME magazine era of indie bands like the Noisettes and emo to time stamp when this was, was entirely under the immediate presumption to hate The Football Factory for presenting lads being violent and racist. What this is now in the modern day, when those lad magazines with topless model photos are now gone, and films about crime and geezers is not as much of a trend as back then in British cinema, is a film which should have been more braver and transgressive but spends its time trying to be cool. It is a tonal choice which makes no sense as, to an outsider like me, these are desperate characters whose acts of standing in a line in an urban wasteland beating each other up into the hospital, or spending all their money down the pub, is not heroic but tragic. The Football Factory's tone, meant to be heroic but within a grey Britain, is its own worst enemy and the real flaw to something which could have worked. Considering the first brawl has a woman with a pram call it out as idiocy, only to undercut it with Dyer's thoughts that at least it is a good Saturday's activity, the film is clashing with itself. This could have led to something about a world of drugs, brawls, racism and people stuck on council estates as kids, subjects which are deserve their time to be detailed upon even with a chirpy sick sense of humour as this tries to have. With these subjects however, arguably the film is far safer with hindsight than one realises, and at times is being safe to the point it makes certain moments more an issue with hindsight, such as the racist cab driver, a semi-frequent side character that represents all the worst anti-immigrant ideas, who called a wanker and is a butt of jokes but is allowed to spiel monologues without actually tackling why racist cab drivers even exist and what makes them tick.

Context really comes to mind with The Football Factory for me, less nostalgia but more an artefact which brings up a lot of the aesthetic and tone from this time period throughout this movie, seeped within this period and thus difficult to separate without going off into a tangent. This entire period into the 2000s can be seen through this film for me, where one on one side you have the music promoted by Q and NME magazine, some of which scores this film, and on the other side you had the aforementioned lad's magazines, which in tone you can find in all the times the term "bird" come in when describing women the cast are attracted to. It was a time when you saw Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson (2008), about the notorious criminal Charles Bronson, on a Tesco's supermarket DVD shelf with a British Union Jack in the background of the cover, trying visible to sell this type of film to a guy's market of being cool, about crime and men, despite films like Refn's especially being far more complicated in its subject and even style. The most infamous I remember, promoted with Danny Dyer's face on the cover and also spotted in the same Tesco store, was The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (2005), a forgotten work which would have been a disastrous marketing choice to sell on Dyer's popularity pre-EastEnders era; from director Thomas Clay, it was a British entry in the wave of extreme cinema in the 2000s like Irréversible (2002) which pushed extremes including the depiction of rape. These films were finding themselves being slotted to specific audiences even when they probably should have focused on being sold not as crowd pleasers. The Football Factory is no different as a film, in scope a lot more complicated in its themes, particularly as the original novel by John King, his debut, is one I think would be rewarding to read. It comes off as a much more complicated and elaborate piece on this subject and the themes it is tackling, the film feeling like it glances past so many for the briefest of macho cheers.

In the centre of Football Factory too is Nick Love, the director whose career up to American Hero (2015) has moved towards executive producer roles and television, whose work around this time into the 2010s includes work about criminals and remaking Alan Clark's The Firm (1989), another work about football hooliganism. His entire filmography is remotely alien to my own personal interests, which I admit a bias to, but what concerns more with The Football Factory is how there is enough grain of interest here and that, in a twisted irony, a far more misanthropic and transgressive film on this subject, bearing in mind it would have to work around being a novel adaptation, would have been far more successful. It may take risk of being more offensive and being misinterpreted as being pro-hooliganism, but it may have gotten to the themes more successfully if it had pulled them off. It begins with how much heavy lifer Dyer himself has to do in terms of narration, where there are large portions where the term "show don't tell" really would have been necessary even if I have no qualms with narrative heavy films existing. The influence of Trainspotting cannot be denied, but whether you think that film was good or not, it carried with it moments of horror as much as gleefully leant into its world of heroin addicts.

The style is also a clear influence, in spite of the fact that, as mentioned, football barely if tangentially is part of this world. The arranged brawls between teams, with only one full length one actually happening by its ending, are more the existential crisis of working class men, something which also can be seen as a link to the Boyle film in how its down-and-out addicts were miscreants of society. Whilst their arguments they would prefer their drug filled life over a materialistic one were in themselves liable to be challenged as juvenile, the closest thing here is the lowest of hanging fruit, the middle class woman one of the characters dates which is just an excuse to mock the middle class, insult her with sexist language, and really not prod at class biases with anything trying to leave a justifiable scar. The one time the film is catching onto something, but barely covers it, is the elderly character who acts like Tommy's father figure, who is from the source novel. The World War II veteran who now, with his friend, lives in an estate with the only hope for life being Australia, saving his pension, his story raises where this film could have gone. He complicates this film and offers a tantalising subplot barely covered, especially as whilst a war hero, his anger also comes from how, having fought the Fascists, he now has to live in a place where casual racism against minorities happens on the bus in front of him. Played by Dudley Sutton, stealing the film, his contrast to Dyer's Tommy, the surrogate grandson who has willingly given himself into violent hooliganism to compensate the ennui of his life, is something you could have expanded upon.  

The stylisation of the film in itself is also something of its time. I do not mind the almost magical realist tone of Tommy's journey, in which an event in the future returns to him over and over, presided upon by an angel of ill omen with bandages on their face. The attempt at being cool as mentioned however struggles. Miss Lucifer by Primal Scream is a good song, but its use here is less appropriate, meant to be for a fist pumping film when the brawl comes, but in reality about guys struggling in what their lives are even if they try to find it by punching Millwall fans. It is not glamorous in context, and should be more cathartic ugly in tone, especially as there is never a football stand or pitch where these events transpire; likely this is due to the controversial subject matter, and trying to film it, but the grey urban locals and CCTV footage are not what I personally would call "chic" for a edgy hooliganism film. The dark ambient of the score makes more sense, especially as the one fight the film reaches is where all the premonitions of ill omen, shot in grey in an underpass and a brick being used on the skull, transpires alongside the lasting physical damage when it finally comes to be. Examples like this, or the weird use of The Jam's Going Underground, which makes no sense with its politicised lyrics, clearly undercut the film. Like that song clearly being one where people only know of it through singing the chorus, the film really is not as confrontational as it should have been.

This is also aware that, with certain Blu Ray releases of The Football Factory as I had, Nick Love's 1999 short film Love Story shows what he should have stuck to only on a significantly higher budget. A tale of two drug addicts, one a pregnant woman about to have a child, the production restrictions on that film would have worked perfectly for a film about football hooliganism. He has a personal touch, having written that short unlike the theatrical film, dialogue from working class characters who cuss all the time, but is distinct and interesting to hear. The emphasis on Love's dialogue, the c-word up the wazoo, and longer scenes using diegetic sound make more sense to have brought over to The Football Factory, only using the style of the feature film and certain songs like Primal Scream's Swastika Eyes when needed. Love Story, a series of vignettes around this central pair of characters, but also following the likes of a lonely cab driver hiring sex workers or the unexpected cameo of Ewen Bremner, aka. Spud from Trainspotting, could have easily been made into a feature film and a rewarding one, intertwining in this world of the homeless and the poverty class interesting characters. Alongside the prowling camera, spinning around the cast and following them like Nick Love used a wheelchair to carry the film camera on, and it is an admirable work set among the graffiti covered public bathrooms and streets. Considering too its use of licence songs works fully, suitable for the slower tone like electronic musician Surgeon or Portishead's Undenied, and it exposed the real issues with The Football Factory. This is a film whose surfing on what was considered hip for the time would make it a far less interesting and far less brave film than it presumed itself to be.