Tommy Johnson (Danny Dyer) is a twenty-something Londoner in a dead-end job who lives for the weekend. That’s when he and his mates get largered and beat the shit out of rival football supporters. Director Nick Love’s account of English hooliganism suggests the problem is one of tribal needs, that these are island-nation lads looking for an army in peacetime. Johnson’s war-vet grandfather is the argument’s counterpoint. The Football Factory is a stylish effort that suggests Trainspotting as directed by Guy Ritchie. Paradoxically, hyper-production at this level is as engaging as it is distancing. Love suckers us in with a flashy visual treatment but keeps emotional contact at a distance. If he’s really trying to let us see the flaws of his characters we need to get closer. Instead they have the studied stupidity of TV thugs. 

The film implies that such vicious behaviour is contained to and by those who find it necessary; that there is harmless collateral damage, a point emphasised by the disturbingly upbeat ending. It is, of course, patent nonsense as alluded to fleetingly by the ‘innocent’ harassment of old men and immigrants. At one point the film asks “what else you gonna do on a Saturday?” One would hope that this kind of tribal bonding is the last thing on a very long list of options. Sadly, for far too many, it rates too close to the top and Love’s unintentional glorification of hooliganism does little to explain the condition and much to endorse it in the fragile minds of many.

// COLIN FRASER