While this was no masterpiece, and teetered at all times between half-decent and a-bit-crap, The Hooligan Factory was actually considerably better than I expected. This isn’t my kind of film, I’ve never even seen anything with Danny Dyer here (who gets an irreverent cameo here), and if we’re honest, there’s no way I would have been to see it if not for one of my band’s tracks being featured on the soundtrack. On that note, I have to say that it’s a rare and special thrill to hear the drums you played pounding out of big cinema speakers while your singer goes into one of his frenzies over a scene where someone attacks someone else with a chainsaw. Marvellous!
But vested interest aside, I had expected little of this film and got rather more than that. It may not have a great plot or quite know if it wants to be a gentle spoof or out-and-out surreal weirdness, but a lot of the jokes work really well, and the decision to make a surrogate father/surrogate son plot the heart of the piece made for parts that were genuinely sweet and warm-hearted – while taking the piss out of the very idea, of course.
Though for months I’ve not quite known if this film was going to be straight-to-DVD or get a proper release through Universal, and am still not entirely clear on the matter, last night it had a big premiere in Leicester Square like, y’know, proper films, and the enjoyable gimmick of having the events before the screening streamed to cinemas around the country. Sitting in Stratford with the director’s football friends – quite a fun little situation – we were first treated to a very awkward attempt to be funny by a compere called ‘Dapper Laughs’ whose repertoire consisted of ‘I take cocaine hurrr’ and ‘I like sex hurrr’. Then there was a gently funny shy comedian called Joel Dommett and, fortunately, Russell Kane, who actually knew what he was doing and managed to warm out the crowd with a genuinely funny routine about English repression, both in the working class and the upper middle class.
Suitably warmed up, we watched the film proper. The central plot follows Danny, played by Jason Maza, who is just about scrawny and doe-eyed enough to make us root for him despite him being a pretty uninteresting thug largely defined by thinking his horrifically violent, quickly incarcerated father was a ‘legend’. When his uncle moves to Australia , he is left homeless, but a chance encounter with former hooligan gang leader Dex, played by director Nick Nevern, introduces him to ‘The Hooligan Factory’, who in the 80s were a legendary ‘firm’. Dex has just got out of the slammer and is out for revenge on rival hooligan firm leader Baron, who pushed Dex’s young son off a bridge at their last fight, resulting in him drowning.
Dex, having been locked up in solitary confinement for his lengthy term, is stuck in the 80s heyday of hooliganism, all tracksuits and stupid moustaches. However, with the help of his gang of colourful characters, he is soon leading his gang out of decline and back to the top of the list of most formidable gangs. Football pretty much doesn’t factor into it at all, which is probably appropriate for these firms, who have pretty close ties with organised crime – presumably the only way otherwise extinct football hooliganism can have persisted.
The humour is bald and often gruesome. Opening scene about an awkward case of mistaken identity and a shotgun is a bit tacked-on but brings some laughs, and the gross-out humour sometimes works, but much better are the time-worn gags about people not noticing something ridiculously obvious, like the most obvious undercover policeman ever, and Dex failing to realise who his baby’s real dad is. There’s a bit of an over-reliance on paedo and gay and gay paedo jokes, which unfortunately also makes a gross-out gay kiss seem like the joke is that it’s gay and gay is disgusting, rather than the joke being that it’s two ridiculous, unsightly macho guys loved up because of some pills that is amusing in a subtly less homophobic sort of way – ie it could have been a gross-out heterosexual kiss with some slightly altered writing.
I also liked the way that no character in the whole film was past ridiculing. Dex in particular is set up as though he’s going to be played as awesome at all times, but is constantly undercut and made the butt of jokes. Even Bullet, played by one of the guys from The Musketeers, who is seen as the film’s real psycho and danger for Danny, is particularly stupid when it comes to realising that ol’ Bill is, well, the Old Bill.
This certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea – including mine. But despite that, it actually manages to be funny at times and even borders on being touching at others. As I said, it teeters between half-decent and a-bit-crap, but falls ultimately, but a hair’s breadth, into half-decent.
