Film: Thoughts on The Firm
It's not, really.
I’ve a tinny of Double Dutch on the go for this. Which should be quite apt when writing about football hooliganism flick The Firm – at least, it would be if it were one of those inexplicably small 80s lager cans that crops up so frequently in the movie. Except, really, it’d probably be close to the mark if I said it was to get me through having to churn out six hundred words about a pretty dismal film.
That would be a bit of an exaggeration, but the title’s still a bit of an unfortunate misnomer. Firm it is not. Shaky would be a better description, and not just because of the ludicrous amount of gratuitous handheld camera nonsense. Everything about it stinks of mediocrity or worse.
This is ostensibly a remake of the couple-of-decades-old TV film of the same name, though by all accounts it’s more loosely based on it. Director Nick Love has had enough experience with this sort of stuff. With both The Football Factory and The Business behind him, you’d think he’d have a pretty good idea of how to get this seedy, British, wannabe-gangster thing right. Yet it fails to hit any significant mark, and it’s difficult to imagine who would be taken by this. Those looking for witty cultural commentary will be disappointed: it doesn’t even try to contextualise the violence. Not that those looking for mindless thuggery will be happy, either: there’s only one scene that comes across anywhere near as brutal as it’s trying to be. The result is an awkward middle ground that’s short on both style and substance.
It follows Dom, a working class lad in his late teens, who becomes fascinated by infamous local troublecauser Clive “Bex” Bissel after he breaks his bezzie mate’s nose in a nightclub. Quickly, after a fair amount of fanatic stalking, Dom finds himself accepted into Bex’s West Ham hooligan firm, and… well. You can guess where things go from there.
This makes the scene look more interesting than it is.
The tale of a troubled youth led astray is a tired one, but more of a problem is the complete lack of depth to even one of the story’s characters. Dom’s about the biggest nonentity protagonist of any film I can think of. Bex is a thug without purpose, with nothing in the way of a background to contextualise his abhorrent behaviour. Everyone else just drifts in and out of relevance, with only Dom’s parents displaying even a shell of credible humanity. And even they are mainly put to use as a poorly judged comedy double act. It all falls flat, and these people’s terrible actions fail to have any impact as a result.
So when Dom finds himself at the wrong end of the firm’s jokes, it’s the soundtrack that tells us we should feel a pang of emotion, not any connection with his character. There’s never a single point of identification with anyone. And when the narrative fails to go anywhere at all, you’re ultimately stuck with spending 90 minutes watching some of the most hateful people imaginable cracking rubbish jokes and eventually cracking each other over the head with baseball bats.
There’s so much history to explore in football hooliganism. Such a rich tapestry of visceral human emotion leading to such atrocious acts of violence. So many complex characters to explore and such interesting scenarios to depict. Watching The Firm has left me curious to discover some of the hidden depths to these fascinatingly brutal years, but the film itself leaves so much ground uncovered. A real wasted opportunity, and a phenomenally disappointing film.
