Down with the Sickness (Green Street: Limited Edition Sleeve Design (DVD))

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Green Street: Limited Edition Sleeve Design (DVD)
Date:	16/04/06 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Special Features, perfect casting and storylines

Disadvantages: Playing off Lord of the Rings coat-tails a bit

Think of times where you see people attached to movies that just don’t seem to fit - look at the X-Men 3 movie coming out next year, Vinnie Jones doesn’t seem right as Juggernaut does he? When the Lord of the Rings trilogy was announced I almost choked on my coffee when Sean Bean was announced as Boromir and when I saw the trailers for Green Street I was shocked to see Elijah Wood in a movie about football hooliganism, but the story fits the character and actor so well that its led to a good film, but rather than just saying that, read on.

The story follows that of Matt (played by Elijah Wood) who has recently been wrongly expelled from a Journalism course at Harvard University after taking the fall for his drug-dealing friend, jaded with the world he travels to England to visit his sister who emigrated to live with her husband and gets introduced to the family. One of the family he meets is the brother in law Pete a football fan who takes him to his first ‘soccer’ game, at this game he gets his first taste of ‘running with the Green Street firm’ which is basically joining the seething underworld of football hooliganism and getting involved with the planning and violence involved.

The heart of any good film is always in the casting, a great story with a crappy cast will always bomb, you need the people who can portray your characters and their emotions correctly, the ones who make you believe in the characters they are playing, luckily Green Street has one of the most aptly chosen casts in a long time.

As said at the start of the review I was shocked to see Elijah Wood attached to the movie, but his casting as Matt is perfect, he owns the screen when he’s on it, and his portrayal of the outsider trying to fit in in a brand new world is at times exquisite. That was a hard thing for me to say back there, as away from the Lord of the Rings trilogy I’ve never been a great fan of Wood’s work, but after seeing Green Street I’m prepared to give the guy another go.

Another great choice was Claire Forlani playing Shannon, Matt’s sister - as Matt gets deeper and deeper into Hooliganism she plays the contrasting part with ease. Her character provides a great look at what its like for people looking in from the outside and watching people you love get sucked into something you don’t want them to.

Then you come onto the existing members of the Green Street firm specifically Pete played by Charlie Hunnam and ‘Bovver’ played by Lee Gregory. At the start of the film you’re expected to believe that these 2 amongst everyone else in the Firm are no good unemployable thugs who do nothing other than drink, go to football and get in fights, and they do that quite well, then as the movie carries on and the characters develop they continue to show their characters on screen without overdoing it.

Finally you get to the supporting cast, there’s plenty of people in the background who appear from time to time, some of them who have an impact on the story, others who are just there to fill the screen. The main 2 that stick out from this are Tommy Hatcher played by Geoff Bell who is the leader of the Green Street Firm’s biggest rivals and Steve played by Marc Warren who is Shannon’s husband and brother to Pete, both of them make an impact on-screen when they come onto it but they don’t steal scene’s away from the main cast.

The actual story in the film is a great one - it’s one that teaches an undertone of loyalty to your friends and family and the portrayal of Matt’s descent into joining the firms is great - none of the themes seem forced upon the film and there’s always a point to the scene being acted out in front of you. This is a rare commodity in films today as a lot of them include scenes that are of no need to the story its telling. But not with Green Street.

Obviously a big part of the film is the violence in it, its often its frequent and at times its very very bloody, for a good idea remember the ‘I wanted to destroy something beautiful’ scene in Fight Club? Imagine 2 Gangs of people doing that to each other, and imagine it happening multiple times within a couple of hours, its an extremely visceral movie, but the violence gets the point across of how some of these ‘Firm wars’ get at times and its never done over the top.

Final views on the movie side of things, are towards soundtrack and location - the location is all based around the streets and localities of London, giving it a dark and dangerous look which is in line with the film, and it adds to the whole feelings that its meant to be giving you. The soundtrack was one of the biggest selling points as it includes a lot of today’s ‘hip young bands’ including Kasabian, Disturbed and the Stone Roses, and it all fits in with the feel and general aura of the movie - never once does it seem as if the music is out of place - and it all adds up to it being a good film.

When you get the DVD naturally you’re going to get Special Features, included in the DVD are an interview with Elijah Wood about the difference between playing Frodo and playing Matt, a look into the violence in the movie, a Making of featurette, One Blood music video, the trailers from both the US and the UK for the movie and a talk with director Lexi Alexander about her inspiration behind the movie.

Now with Special Features I personally feel that a lot of the time they’re not worth the film they were filmed on, but on the Green Street Disc they seem extremely informative and relevant, in her talks about the inspiration for the film Alexander is extremely open and honest with her feelings, that is rare to see in this type of feature and the Making of featurette is extremely in-depth and makes the movie all the more worthwhile seeing. The music video and the trailers are both the standard fare and in fact the only one I didn’t feel anything towards was the interview with Elijah Wood, it felt a tiny bit like Green Street was trying to fly on Lord of the Rings coat-tails a bit, which it doesn’t need to do.

The actually quality of the transition onto DVD is again as good as that when the film was originally showed in the cinemas, not once does the picture skip or does the soundtrack never plays outside of Sync with the movie being played.

Final thoughts are that this is a worthy addition to anyone’s DVD collection - its a gritty drama that probably won’t get the critical acclaim it deserves because of its subject matter, but what I would say is that this is not the kind of film you want playing when kids are around, its extremely visceral and violent, but if you get chance by all means get it for a good film to watch on a night when there’s nothing better to do.

Summary: A gritty drama thats violent and nasty, but still a great film