Green Street (18)

Dir. Lexi Alexander, 2005 , USA 109 mins

Cast: Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam, Claire Forlani, Leo Gregory, Marc Warren

Elijah Wood is a long way from the Shire in his latest film, Green Street, which opens across the UK this month. In his latest attempt to extricate himself from the success of Lord of the Rings trilogy, the diminutive actor finds himself running with a gang of football hooligans in this low-budget effort from German-born director Lexi Alexander.

A former World Kickboxing champion and self-confessed gang member for the Mannheim City Boys firm, Alexander first came to attention in 2003 with her Oscar nominated dramatic short Johnny Flynton about a boxer whose struggles are both in the ring and in the four walls of his home. Attempting to replicate this success in her first full-length feature, Green Street is a British football hooligan melodrama about the consequences of ritualistic violence puncturing the domestic sphere.

The film's working title was The Yank, and our entry into the film is through American Matt Buckner (Wood), a Harvard journalism student expelled months before graduation. Framed by his drug-addicted roommate and seemingly friendless, Matt is unable to turn to his absent father so he heads to London to seek refuge with his sister Shannon (Forlani) and her husband Steve (Warren). Before the sun has set on his first day in the capital, Matt has befriended Pete Dunham (Hunnam), Steve's younger brother and leader of the Green Street Elite (GSE), a hardcore group of West Ham supporters. After attending his first football match (he is warned by his sister about referring to the beautiful game as "soccer"), Matt is attacked by rival fans but is saved by the GSE and a violent brawl ensues. Having taken the fall for his roommate back in the US , it isn't hard to see why Matt is attracted by Pete and the loyalty of his firm.

Not everyone approves of Matt's presence though, with wide boy Bover (Gregory) suspicious of this fresh-faced yank who has usurped his place as Pete's right-hand man. Matt's problem, besides sticking out more than a proverbial thumb, is that the GSE hates two things: police and journalists. Despite the best efforts of his sister and a surprise visit by his father (also a journalist who is surprisingly short of words when it comes to his family), Matt becomes embroiled in the violence of rival football firms and his presence is the catalyst for an explosive finale that threatens to tear both flesh and family apart.

Drawing upon her own experiences, Alexander's film penetrates the lives of football hooligans, their intense camaraderie and those affected by their actions. Championed by films like I.D. (1995) and more recently, The Football Factory (2004), these match-day fraternities have taken on mythological proportions and Green Street breathes new life into this weary subject. The game and its clubs are what divide hooligans, but bloody brawls are what unite these team players whose sport is played on the streets of London. As Pete explains in the film, "West Ham's football is mediocre, but our firm's top notch and everyone knows it."

Green Street subscribes to the Fight Club school of thought, where people with families and routine jobs can feel truly alive by matching head vs. fist, and it is in the fight scenes that the director really makes her mark. Set to a pulsating dance-track, the camera jitters as fists fly and bottles are smashed. Claret is projected across the screen, but it is blood, not wine, that adorns the faces of the victorious gangs like war paint. However, the film's biggest strength is also its weakness and although the script predictably moralises the fighting ("Pete and his thug friends aren't the answer"), it conflicts with the glorification of the violence and the suggestion that their thuggish solidarity is somehow admirable. Unlike Alan Clarke's TV drama The Firm (1988), starring Gary Oldman, Alexander never fully gets to grips with the social politics that makes hooliganism so attractive to young men.

Wood, eager to avoid the Mark Hamill route to obscurity, continues to select challenging roles, such as the cannibal psychopath in Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (2005), but despite his best efforts here, has been miscast in a role that requires great leaps of belief. Bearing heavy-handed exposition like "we nearly died that day in Manchester ", would have been a stretch for any actor, but it is the evolution from Harvard to hooligan (swapping his Aran knit for a chavtastic tracksuit) that leaves Wood punching above his weight.

The young British cast fare better, especially Leo Gregory (already been feted by Screen International as one of Britain 's most promising talents) whose anger and resentment is always bubbling away behind a paper-thin surface. Despite a 'cock-er-nee' accent that falls the wrong side of Dick Van Dyke ("you're avin' a bubble!"), Charlie Hunnam brings an equally unstable presence to his role as the firm's leader, spitting out every expletive while Claire Forlani balances the mood and emotes the quiet desperation of the film's solitary female.

Green Street could have limited its audience from the start, but Alexander has injected enough genuinely engaging drama to ensure its crossover potential and the film won both the grand jury prize and audience award for best feature at this years' SXSW Festival. Moreover, her natural flair for directing action should see her infiltrate that other famous patriarchal society, Hollywood. Judging from Alexander's efforts here, she's more than capable of standing up for herself.