Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1783 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-12-26
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Elijah Wood could've opted for further big budget epics, but took a sharp left turn with this better-than-average B-movie. Released just after Everything is Illuminated, another offbeat entry, Wood plays journalism student Matt Buckner. In the prologue, he's expelled from Harvard when his over-privileged roommate sets him up to take the fall for his own misdeeds. With nowhere to go, Matt decides to visit his sister, Shannon (Claire Forlani), in London. He's already got a chip on his shoulder when he falls under the sway of Shannon's brother-in-law, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), head of West Ham's football "firm," the Green Street Elite. Matt soon gets caught up in their thuggish antics—to tragic effect. In her feature debut, German-born Lexi Alexander makes a mostly convincing case for the attractions of violence to the emotionally vulnerable, as opposed to the emotionally numb pugilists of the more satirical Fight Club. Unlike David Fincher (by way of Chuck Palahniuk), she plays it straight, except for the stylised fight sequences. Consequently, humour is in short supply, but the young Brit cast, especially Leo Gregory as the surly Bovver, is charismatic and Wood makes his character as believable as possible, i.e. he may seem miscast, but that's the point. Although there's no (direct) correlation between the two, Green Street makes a fine taster for Bill Buford's Among the Thugs, the ultimate dissection of the hooligan mentality. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Synopsis
Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood) is a student who travels to London, where he forms an unlikely bond with his sister’s husband's brother, Pete Dunham (Charlie Hunnam), who introduces him to the world of football hooliganism. Violence breaks out at a West Ham game that Matt attends with Pete and Matt's initial trepidation at the violence swelling around him soon turns into a pulse-racing, visceral thrill. Suddenly finding a taste for the hooligan life, Matt joins Pete's "firm," the Green Street Elite, leading to further booze-fuelled confrontations and providing an opportunity for Matt to keep a journal explaining why he's attracted to such a violent pursuit. Surprisingly, Elijah Wood manages to fit perfectly into a role that seems ill-suited to his elfin, wide-eyed looks. Charlie Hunnam--who starred in the television programmes Queer As Folk and Undeclared--neatly complements Wood as the cockney boy who leads him into danger, and together the two actors manage to carve out convincingly violent characters. Thematically similar to The Football Factory, Green Street mixes loud, energetic soundtrack and roaming, trembling camera work to create a disquieting atmosphere in a movie punctuated with scenes of rampant brutality.

Customer Reviews

So astonishingly bad you'll laugh out loud
Forget 'Plan Nine from Outer Space', this film is quite possibly the worst ever made...but don't expect American audiences to notice. You have to be English to spot the absurdity of it all: the Cockney accents that make you pine for Dick Van Dyke; the use of the Millennium Dome as an 'ominous' location; Frodo Baggins and his diabolical acting; the fact that he can't remember the tune of 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' even at the very end; the hopelessly simplistic attempt to 'explain' football hooliganism to a cluless audience; the young guy from 'Queer As Folk' running Britain's most feared firm, the 'Green Street Elite' (I'm not making this up); a cameo appearance by Frank McAvennie; the 'message' that mindless violence may not be as much fun as it's cracked up to be, kids! At some points I really thought the female German director had sought to make an Airplane-type comedy, with everyone taking it so seriously to get bigger laughs. Fascinatingly inept, it makes 'The Football Factory' look like 'The Godfather'.

'Hey Pete, got any jobs going?'
When films are this bad, your humble reviewer is in a quandary:
Go full hit and expound manifold reasons why said work stinks like a dead whale, or curtly dismiss it, therefore saving words, phrases and ideas for reviews which better merit the process of their conception.

It really doesn't take much perception or insight to be able to judge 'Green Street' as the worst kind of film that gets made today. An idiotic mish-mash of social commentary and action thriller; and a glaring example of Hollywood's deep obsession/understanding of the darker side of all things culturally British.

Ie: Find a subject that they think is cinematic/appealing to people's baser principles, go to 'authentic' locations, hire 'local' actors, and finally, plonk a well-known American in the lead so, in theory, you have something which appeals to everyone.

But, and it's a big but, for this to work you need a few things in your favour:
You need a decent script; you need the director to at least be alive, and you need the cast to be on top of their game.
'Green Street' doesn't have any of these. In spades.

Some proof? I HATE lists, but they're all that 'GS' deserves..
1) The script. It would take too long to convey how bad it is, so some examples:
If you're a footie thug, one of your major essentials on a match-day is avoiding the police. Drunkenly screaming your heads off down the tube will get you surrounded in seconds.
On occasion, the film looks like an ad for Lacoste trainers. Most hooligans don't wear whites because it shows blood up too easily if the cops are looking for you later. Wow, research? Duh.
There's no football 'lad' IN THE WORLD, who on seeing his brother's new baby, will start singing "I'm West Ham til I die!!!" at the top of his voice.
Being teenage in a film is one thing, being completely infantile is another.
There are no pubs in London where you can stand on tables, sing like donkeys and lash lager all over each other without burly bouncers forcibly removing you, and the cops closing the place down within 48 hours.
All this, and more, in the first 15 minutes! Sets the tone early on, and the film never recovers.

2)The director. Where to start. The violence (and lets face it, that's the only reason we're watching this nonsense) is handled al la Van Damme. Shamelessly contrived (are fights ALWAYS between equal numbers?), and bar-room.
Drunken louts fly through the air, blood squirts in slow motion, camera's glide and zoom. Oh blah blah. Tiresome beyond the box-office. Clueless use of (tepid anyway) music on the soundtrack. Naïve and stereotypical use of locations. On and on and on...(zzzzz.... reviewer needs caffeine)

3)The 'star'.(Ie. The review's meat, as opposed to the script being the spuds, and the director the veg!) In this case it's a hottie, Elijah Wood, fresh from a scary trip to Doom Mountain and being careless with some bling.
I swear to you he's asleep throughout the film. It's obvious to all, that he's asked his agent to find him a role as far removed from the Shire as is possible. His agent says "British football hooligans!!" and Elijah says "I'll do it"
What he didn't do, was check the script, signed up blind, and lived to regret it. He's awake long enough to look lost, bemused and incredulous all at once, before he reverts back to his state of torpor and prays for shooting to finish so he can cash his cheque and get on the first plane out. Back to Trippin' AM (undisputed queen of the fan-girls!!), and his next embarrassing mis-cast as Iggy Pop!.
Weedy, sleepy, snoozy, contractually obliged. Bless him. "I'm not feeling too good, I wanna go home" he slurs at one stage. You and me both mate.

The rest of the cast go from being slightly worse than EJ, to being absolutely dreadful. Accents slip from posh acting school to Cockney, and back again in bewildering fashion. None of them look remotely hard, the nearest they've got to Chelsea is when Major Daddy took 'em down to Kensington to look at apartments.
Some of these guys might just make decent lucky-chimney-sweeps at weddings when the acting work dries up. (Start booking now!)

The only female in the cast is a looker (yay! A positive! I nearly gave it another star for that), but she provides worthy competition to the blokes in the scene-chewing, chronic over-acting competition.
It's close, but the guys win on points.

This genre cries out for a passionate director and a believable script, and maybe one day a definitive football thug movie will be made, but it will have to be the polar opposite of 'Green Street' in just about every aspect.

Comatose from start to painful end, it's difficult to see why such visual (and visceral!) subject matter falls so miserably at every hurdle. You'd think it would inspire scorching cordon bleu movies, instead of the half-baked, week-old meat pie b's that it actually does.
And that's about as fair as I can be to a ludicrous work of elaborate fiction masquerading as caustic social artifact.

A British Comedy Classic!
I've given Green Street top marks because by every fault of its own it is one of the finest comedies of recent years. Almost everything about this film is side-splittingly funny, from the totally implausible storyline, the unbelievable characters, the dubious and Pwropa Nawty Cockney accents to the over-the-top 'performances'. I kept expecting Dick Van Dyke to turn up as a pub landlord - 'awlwight, lads, now pipe down will ya?'
This is unintentional laughter, wince inducement and a belly laughfest from start to finish - from the ill-advised casting of Elijah Wood in the main role to a late scene - a fight between rival firms - where Clare Forlani arrives to save the day in her Range Rover. This is laugh-out loud stuff and deserves to become a modern comedy classic. I can't wait for some inspired impresario to turn it into a West End musical. Perhaps the funniest thing is the producers' intention for it to be taken seriously. Amazingly, in some places it is even being sold in a boxset with Scorsese's 'GoodFellas'. Isn't that a bit like packaging 'Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer' with 'Sleepless in Seattle'? Pwropa Nawty!