This subject was tackled (no pun intended) with more substance in Alan Clarke's The Firm almost two decades ago. That was an intelligent, humane look a subject all too easily exploited, a la The Factory Of Footballers. This film, by way of contrast, is seemingly made for folks who prefer that other slice of Clarke-directed grit, the infamous Scum, especially the bits were a fella gets his head done in with a sock-full of snooker balls, or a fella gets his head smashed off a sink, or the young, lonely bloke gets raped in the greenhouse.
They'd lap that shit up, is what I'm guessing.
What these film-making types need to do is take a walk around some of the areas they so readily vilify, and see how "real people" actually live. They might also want to take a walk around a casualty ward on a Saturday night and see the results of some of the hilarious shenanigans they take so much time to endorse.
Oh, but they're not endorsing it, The Duke, you're just being a knee-jerking jerker of the knees about that particular point. I mean, come on, he says at the end, "Is it all worth it?"
And then he grins and returns to his moronic buddies for a pint and possibly to throw a dart or two at a passing Asian.
At a time when the BNP are scarily popular, when racist attacks in Belfast are rising with every weekend that passes, when folks are actually starting to realise that "Lad Culture" was about little more than glorifying how much of a fuckwit one was, The Football Factory doesn't seem hard-hitting, or No-Holds-Barred or any of that shite. It just reveals itself as empty, shallow, disgusting, irresponsible, worthless fucking garbage.
The Duke thought it was a load of arse-paste, is the gist of my complaint.
The Duke resides at Mondo Irlando
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