'Green Street Hooligans', filmanalyse

Green Street Hooligans is a drama film from 2005, and the running time is 109 min. It is directed by Lexi Alexander and the stars are Elijah Wood, who plays Matt, and Charlie Hunnam, who plays Pete. It has won 3 awards, which are the best feature, best of the fest and special jury award.

The film begins at Harvard where Matt, a journalist student, wrongfully gets expelled. The reason is that his roommate Jeremy Van Holden hides cocaine in Matt’s cupboard and the authorities find these. He is afraid to tell it because the Van Holden family is very powerful, so he has to leave. He tries to call his father but he gets the answering machine, so now he can escape from his father’s judgement. He takes an aeroplane to London, where his sister Shannon, her husband Steve and their child live. Already the first day at Shannon’s place Matt meets Steve’s brother Pete, who is a violent football hooligan. Steve suggests that Pete takes Matt to a West Ham football match, but Pete is sceptical of bringing a Yankee. Pete takes after all Matt to the Pub, where the West Ham fans are meeting. He follows them to the game and at the first time in his life he experiences the football environment. After the match he starts walking home by himself but on the way he gets attacked by another hooligan group, but Pete and his friends luckily come and help him. Matt has here his first fight, which gives him the adrenaline kick and he gets introduced into the GSE, which is West Ham’s firm. All the members of GSE apart from Bovver have accepted Matt, and he is become a part of the group. Matt’s father comes one day and visits Shannon and Matt. He takes Matt to The Times’ headquarters to lunch. One of the firm sees it, which is very problematic when the firm hates journalists. He tells it to Bovver and they confront Pete with it. At first he doesn’t believe them but then they are checking Matt’s computer and they find some documents, which disapproves it. It is a very bad time that this problem comes out because it just before a very important match against Millwall. Also Pete’s brother Steve finds out that Matt has something to do with journalistic, so he goes to the pub to warn Matt. Matt finds out that Steve used to be “The Major” of GSE. When Steve was the Major, the last game he went to was between West Ham and Millwall and it was a horrible experience. Tommy Hatcher, the Major of Millwall’s firm, brought his 12-years-old son, and after the game a big fight between to teams broke out. In this fight Tommy’s son died and after Steve had seen that he quit the GSE. Tommy is to take revenge in the next game. Bovver, Pete and the other arrive to the pub and there is a big quarrel, which ends for Matt’s advantages. Bovver still doesn’t believe in Matt so he goes to Tommy Hatcher in Millwall and tells that “The Major” is at the pub. The Millwall fans come and smash the pub up and Tommy stabs Pete down. Pete goes to the hospital and luckily he survives, but Shannon leaves him when she has said that if he went back to the hooligan environment, she would leave him. The two firms plan a fight, which isn’t in connection with the match. Bovver shows up to the fight and he fights for GSE to try to make up for what he has done. He helps Pete, who has been badly hurt, but Pete says that if he wants to make up for what he has done, then he should get Shannon and her son away from there. Shannon was come to fetch Matt and she is attacked by one of Tommy’s men as a revenge on Steve. In this fight Tommy is beating Pete to death, because he says that it was Tommy himself, who killed his son. Matt flies back to America where he confronts Jeremy Van Holden on a toilet. Matt has a tape recorder in his pocket, and in the conversation Matt gets proves, so he has now a ticket back to Havard.