Green Street Hooligans

• A wrongfully expelled Harvard undergrad moves to London, where he is introduced to the violent underworld of soccer hooliganism.Running Time: 108 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R Age: 012569760295 UPC: 012569760295 Manufacturer No: 76029

A wrongfully expelled Harvard undergrad moves to London, where he is introduced to the violent underworld of soccer hooliganism.

DVD Features:
Documentary:The Making of Hooligans
Music Video:"One Blood" Music Video by Terence Jay

After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Elijah Wood could've opted for further big budget epics, but took a sharp left turn with this better-than-average B-movie. Released just after Everything is Illuminated, another offbeat entry, Wood plays journalism student Matt Buckner. In the prologue, he's expelled from Harvard when his over-privileged roommate sets ! him up to take the fall for his own misdeeds. With nowhere to go, Matt decides to visit his sister, Shannon (Claire Forlani), in London. He's already got a chip on his shoulder when he falls under the sway of Shannon's brother-in-law, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), head of West Ham's football "firm," the Green Street Elite. Matt soon gets caught up in their thuggish anticsâ€"to tragic effect. In her feature debut, German-born Lexi Alexander makes a mostly convincing case for the attractions of violence to the emotionally vulnerable, as opposed to the emotionally numb pugilists of the more satirical Fight Club. Unlike David Fincher (by way of Chuck Palahniuk), she plays it straight, except for the stylized fight sequences. Consequently, humor is in short supply, but the young Brit cast, especially Leo Gregory as the surly Bovver, is charismatic and Wood makes his character as believable as possible, i.e. he may seem miscast, but that's the point. Although there's no (direct) ! correlation between the two, Green Street makes a fine ! taster f or Bill Buford's Among the Thugs, the ultimate dissection of the hooligan mentality. --Kathleen C. Fennessy