Green Street Hooligans
Oct. 15th, 2005 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieSaw Green Street Hooligans with Elijah Wood and Charlie Hunnam yesterday. It's a flawed but interesting movie, and despite the somewhat melodramatic climax, I really enjoyed it. Totally worth $9 (and not just because Charlie takes off his shirt and he's got the body to die for).
Elijah Wood is a wrongfully kicked out of Harvard journalism major who goes to England to visit his sister and there falls in with the Green Street Hooligans of the title (and how it's done is very believable), led by Charlie Hunnam's Pete (and if you've only seen CH as the gentle, mannered Nicholas Nichleby, he's quite a revelation as the foul-mouthed, violent, yet incredibly charismatic Pete here).
I liked that the movie made Elijah a representation of the audience, really. Because that whole duality of "violence is bad" and "but it feels good to let loose" that he experiences is shared by the audience: you are both appalled by people fighting like that over football, but you also get really drawn into the violence. I walked out of the movie withmy adrenaline pumping and yet my brain telling me: what a waste of people. Just as Pete is both violent and not someone you'd ever want to cross, but he is aso incredibly vital and magnetic and you go from fear and a sort of appalled disdain, to a genuine liking and admiration, the way Elijah Wood's character does, all the while knowing that what he is doing is pointless and wrong (and I love how we get small, delicate hints that the men are doing all this to escape the drabness of their lives).
The secondary characters are also really interesting. In fact, I wanted to know more about them, even though it was clearly not possible in the movie's format (Elijah's sister and her husband especially).
Oh, any any fans of slash? There is so much subtext here, it's not even funny.
So yeah, totally worth the $$$.
Elijah Wood is a wrongfully kicked out of Harvard journalism major who goes to England to visit his sister and there falls in with the Green Street Hooligans of the title (and how it's done is very believable), led by Charlie Hunnam's Pete (and if you've only seen CH as the gentle, mannered Nicholas Nichleby, he's quite a revelation as the foul-mouthed, violent, yet incredibly charismatic Pete here).
I liked that the movie made Elijah a representation of the audience, really. Because that whole duality of "violence is bad" and "but it feels good to let loose" that he experiences is shared by the audience: you are both appalled by people fighting like that over football, but you also get really drawn into the violence. I walked out of the movie withmy adrenaline pumping and yet my brain telling me: what a waste of people. Just as Pete is both violent and not someone you'd ever want to cross, but he is aso incredibly vital and magnetic and you go from fear and a sort of appalled disdain, to a genuine liking and admiration, the way Elijah Wood's character does, all the while knowing that what he is doing is pointless and wrong (and I love how we get small, delicate hints that the men are doing all this to escape the drabness of their lives).
The secondary characters are also really interesting. In fact, I wanted to know more about them, even though it was clearly not possible in the movie's format (Elijah's sister and her husband especially).
Oh, any any fans of slash? There is so much subtext here, it's not even funny.
So yeah, totally worth the $$$.
