Except for the one The Duke lives in, I might add. Or any of the ones my friends live in.
In fact, although it goes to great lengths to mock "wannabe middle class cunts", the picture displays more patronising generalizations concerning the working class than almost the entirety of Ken Loach's screen-output, which is a lot of films. Just like Ken Loach's Drunk Yobs In The Council Estate, or his seminal Wife-Beating Yobs In The Council Estate, this film tells us how everybody ever raised in a semi-detached council house is most likely some kind of murdering barbarian, except for a couple of old fellas, but certainly, no-one born any later than 1960 can be trusted.
Of course, us folks that actually do live in said council estates, we look about us and scratch heads and stroke chins and generally wonder where the fuck these filmmakers get this idea from?
The answer probably lies in the same place they got all their other ideas from, ie, other films. The Football Factory wants for all the world to be a hip, zeitgeist-defining bout of Youth Culture shenanigans. To this end, it rips off, amongst many, many other "street" stylings, the "Choose Life" monologue from the start of Trainspotting, although manages, miraculously, to be 99% less witty whilst utilising 99% more f-words. By f-words I of course mean fuck, fucker, fat fucking fuck-face and so on. I don't want to offend anyone.
And it looks like Nick Love, him what is behind this shameless nonsense, won't be offending many people either. He surely believes that he has created a thought-provoking, intellectually-stimulating portrayal of male tribal culture, but he tells us absolutely nothing we didn't already know.
To wit; Football Hooligans are nasty motherfuckers, but some of them are more nasty than others.
This is the crux of his thesis, the core of this monumentally pointless extravaganza. Also, he'd like to make a point about how much it hurts to get kicked in the teeth.
The more I think about, the more dubious and downright nasty this film becomes. All involved have banged on about how much the real-life gangs, or "firms", love it. And why shouldn't they? There's absolutely nothing here that would make a member of this kind of fascist, slack-jawed, nationalistic crowd of bastards feel anything less than pride. Shit, man, ain't we just the coolest motherfuckers you ever did see? Doesn't it just make you want to, I dunno, insult an Indian teenager on the bus, or punch the fuck out of a nine year old kid?
The whole thing is also embarrassingly dated.
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