Yeah, this kind of thing definitely doesn't not happen. The king of thing you'd struggle not to be aware of (unless you live in the country I guess) in Britain, though most aren't immediately involved. The movie follows an English firm and their punchy and kicky adventures. What I don't get, is if they have so much violent energy, why not go into organised crime? At least then you'd be making money from beating people up, not just doing it for football and then working at a crappy flower shop. Maybe I just get football though, to me it's akin to chess or monopoly. It's not art, it's a game. It's a sport, too, which comes under games. Art to me is a level up from games in importance. I guess there can be a painting of footballers or something, and individually carved chess pieces can be art. The design of many computer games make them art, but the act of playing them is a game. Just like the design of the stadium can be art, but the bit where you run around and kick is a game.
That's my opinion, anyway. It's fun to watch if you're in a crowd of people that care, but rugby's more actiony. Hell, even American football is more actiony.
We open with lots of real clips football fights. I know that the aim is to make it feel real and gritty, and while it partially succeeds it over does it a bit. The music is too loud here and for much of the movie, and the camera sweeps and zooms are too fast to be taken seriously. They knew what they wanted, and they knew the techniques, but they went over the top in implementing them.
There are also many cliches: the shots of that one corner in London with a few screens on it, the rhyming slang, the 'Goodfellas' jolly-turned-serious scenes, etc. Arguably the racist taxi driver was another cliche, but the fact that it's randomly him driving any taxi they use totally made up for it. Rockstar Games are credited as executive producers - they're the guys in Dundee who did GTA (this was their first excursion into film making territory), which i saw one of them in the movie playing at one point.
The movie isn't very imaginative, it's all been done before, and nothing really happens in the end. I enjoyed it though, especially the "Danny now follows rugby... bollocks" part of the ps. reel. The main character was played by Danny Dyer, of course, and the whole cast of 'EastEnders' were in it (an exaggeration but there were a few). Oh yeah, and I liked his friend's rant at the middle class parents of his girlfriend.
The Football Factory: 34.9