What turns outwardly-respectable, middle-class young English blokes into thuggish soccer hooligans?
Nick Love’s The Firm, a remake of Alan Clarke’s acclaimed BBC telemovie, delves into the ugly culture that blighted Britain and the beautiful game in the 1980s but doesn’t provide many answers.
Bex (Paul Anderson), the leader of a group of West Ham supporters in London’s East End, is portrayed as a sadistic bully and psychopath. Love contrasts Bex’s violent, anti-social streak with his job selling real estate and his settled home life with wife and young son without conveying any sense of how the man reconciles his Jekyll and Hyde split personality.
Calum McNab plays Dom, a teenager who rapidly becomes in thrall to Bex, gladly joins his Firm and abandons his best mate. But why? Because he’s young, bored, impressionable and searching for his own identity, the screenplay suggests, while giving Dom little chance to express how he feels or what he really wants in life. Dom regards Bex with something akin to hero worship and there are homoerotic undertones to the close bonding between members of the Firm.
Dom works with his tolerant dad (Eddie Webber), a hardworking builder, who understandably disapproves of the influence Bex exerts over his son. As the violence escalates and Bex pursues a personal vendetta against Yeti (Daniel Mays), the head of a rival Firm which supports Millwall, Dom finally starts to question his commitment and loyalty to Bex.
The brutality throughout the film becomes mind-numbingly repetitive, as does the frequent use of the c–word, although the climactic battle sequence packs an emotional wallop.
Anderson and McNab give solid performances within the constraints of their two-dimensional characters. It’s occasionally difficult to follow some of the dialogue due to the accents and sprinkling of Cockney slang expressions. I learned that 'dry lunch" denotes a tightwad but I haven’t a clue what 'diddicoy" or 'div" mean.
