Sadly it will be largely forgotten as made for TV/straight to video/independent films do. I will give a brief review to it though as it is a film I have always remembered.
Me and my mates had a great laugh and were glued to the TV when watching it! The football chants, the aggression and hostility to the opposing sides, the pub gatherings, the boozing .the lad-ish behaviour all so authentically British!
But, what I remember about it is the characters and their development throughout the story.
It follows a band of Cops set as an undercover squad to infiltrate the hooligan element in the local team: Shadwell FC (if I remember correctly)
The story follows the evolution of their demeanours and near loss of their own psyche (one actually did totally loose it) as they seek to emulate hooligans in the undercover sting operation. These are professional policeman and they are gradually declining into real hooliganism. Their behaviour is spilling over into their professional lives ...into their non-working lives into their family lives and has some disastrous consequences.
Scene by scene, act by act, you can see they are slipping into a dark area of human psychology and sociology which I myself had been used to seeing in the British football arena.
This film premise has been done before and has been done since .but not as good and they way this film does it. It does it in a gradual incremental process which you follow almost as if you there yourself. You can empathise. You can almost see yourself doing the same thing if you and your mates had to do such a sting operation. Getting carried away in your role living it too much for real losing your identity (I.D.)!!
Watch it if you can still find it; a little gem of a movie!
Me and my mates had a great laugh and were glued to the TV when watching it! The football chants, the aggression and hostility to the opposing sides, the pub gatherings, the boozing .the lad-ish behaviour all so authentically British!
But, what I remember about it is the characters and their development throughout the story.
It follows a band of Cops set as an undercover squad to infiltrate the hooligan element in the local team: Shadwell FC (if I remember correctly)
The story follows the evolution of their demeanours and near loss of their own psyche (one actually did totally loose it) as they seek to emulate hooligans in the undercover sting operation. These are professional policeman and they are gradually declining into real hooliganism. Their behaviour is spilling over into their professional lives ...into their non-working lives into their family lives and has some disastrous consequences.
Scene by scene, act by act, you can see they are slipping into a dark area of human psychology and sociology which I myself had been used to seeing in the British football arena.
This film premise has been done before and has been done since .but not as good and they way this film does it. It does it in a gradual incremental process which you follow almost as if you there yourself. You can empathise. You can almost see yourself doing the same thing if you and your mates had to do such a sting operation. Getting carried away in your role living it too much for real losing your identity (I.D.)!!
Watch it if you can still find it; a little gem of a movie!