Review of “Football Factory”

Review of “Football Factory”
The movie “Football Factory” is a quite realistic movie that is illustrating the phenomenon of hooliganism. There are no fancy and dramatic cutting techniques, artificial lights and angles in use, like in big Hollywood productions. It almost feels like a documentary, without being one. It is showing us a world and a way of living that is hard and impossible to relate to. This insane world is being told through the eyes of the main character, named Tommy Johnson. There are two stories going on at the same time, which we watch alternately. One about Tommy, and one about Tommy’s grandfather, who is planning on moving to Australia. Tommy, also called Tom, is a man in his late twenties, who lives in a lower middle class society in England. He is surviving the every day by working at a flower- and plant store, and is living his life to a maximum in the weekends by drinking, having sex with random girls he bumps into at bars, while he is drinking and doing drugs. In the beginning of the movie, he says “The best thing next to violence is sex” and that is what he is living and breathing for. It could be a description of any young English man, but the different and ordinary thing about Tommy is his tremendous love and obsession with football, especially Chelsea, and violence. He is the typical hooligan. His friends feel the way, and they drink and fight side by side. They are in a group with members, whose hobbies are getting adrenaline rushes and a feeling of being alive, protecting and honoring, by planning to fight against other hooligan groups with same interests, in the name of Chelsea. Underneath the surface Tommy is beginning to doubt his lifestyle, after he is getting some unpleasant nightmares. You can tell that they are living in a low class part of England, because of their clothes, which looks cheap and worn. Another sign is them drinking several beers at their local pub almost every night. Their use of language is something worth noticing, because they are cursing a lot and using negatively charged slang, such as “cunt”, “shit” and “fuck” all the time, in every sentence.