Watch The Firm For Free

Powerful

People are voting emotionally.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

One of director Alan Clarke's last film, The Firm was a controversial film for the BBC Screen Two strand dealing with the issue of football hooliganism a topical subject in 1980s Britain.This film mixed football gang violence with Thatcher's 80s Britain with the rise of the Yuppies. In fact in the late 80s there was some evidence that the new breed of football hooligans were not skinheads in denims but rather aspirational and smartly dressed.The opening scene with the protagonists playing a football match features no actual football.Gary Oldman is charismatic as Bexy a cocky estate agent by day with a wife and young child but also the leader of the Inter City firm who has vision of leading the English contingent of hooligans in the 1988 European football championship which was a damp squib for the actual English football team.Bexy has run ins with rival gangs especially the one led by Phil Davis. This is a memorable Screen Two film not only because of its subject matter, but it also contained many rising stars such as Phil Davis, Nick Dunning as well as Oldman and rather a few people who became better known in soap operas.The film was remade in 2009 for a cinema release but its this version which has stood the test of time with Oldman's performance at the centre, Al Hunter's writing and Alan Clarke's direction.

This was regarded at one point as being the greatest ever film to feature football hooliganism so much so that when Nick Love remade it in 2009 you'd think he'd committed the worst cultural taboo imaginable judging by some reactions . To be fair to Love his remake wasn't so much a remake but more of a reworking of the original story where a peripheral character became the story's focus and where character dynamics were completely different . Even so the original version of THE FIRM has gained such a reputation over the years it's almost like the holy grail of hooligan films . After seeing it again I have to question why this is ? Certainly it's a very entertaining film but not necessarily for the right reasons . The story centres around which football firm will be leading the charge of English football violence at the 1988 Euro Championship in West Germany . It's dog eat dog , survival of the fittest as a group of well known British actors from EASTENDERS , ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES and CORONATION ST try and mince one another to death . It's WWF meets Derek Jarman as they try and come up with the meanest put down while trying to act all tough and macho . I'll give the cast some credit and say they must have put a lot of rehearsal in to this because the lines are genuinely funny even though one suspects they weren't supposed to be Alan Clarke seems a strange choice as director . Regarded as one of the greats of British realist cinema and whose inspiration is still felt today he can't really make the characters or situations any more realistic than the cartoonish characters appear to be on the written page . Worse than that his realist style seems to jar with the genuinely cartoonish witty one liners that contradicts the feeling this might in anyway be a realist film . His use of steadicam used so effectively in SCUM is slightly distracting THE FIRM also suffers from a very dated feel . The thugs seen here are relatively old and affluent and you can see there's a slight social commentary equating soccer violence with Thatcherism and social mobility . But at the end of the day everything about it has a camp feel and one wonders if the demise of the football hooligan had a lot to do with them being portrayed as latent homosexuals which is definitely a feeling you get with this film

The firm is a film about the antics of football hooligans who were in their prime in the eighties and Gary Oldman is brilliant at portraying how moronic these idiots were . We se how his "Firm" battle against other local firms and we see how they were not afraid to stab,beat or even shoot each other in the name of fun. I am not myself going to say these idiots did (or still do) in the name of football because this is nothing to do with football , the sport i watch and love , it is a social problem. The ironic thing about these scum is that after beating each other up they gang together and beat foreign football to a pulp. The film is an insight and it is great to see Oldman in a film where he does not have to put on an American accent but if you want to see a better film on football hooligans watch " I.D " . 7 out of 10.

Oh Yes...This is no exaggeration. The footie the fights. This movie has it all. I grew up on the outskirts of this thing, and as the movie shows, it is all highly organized and the participants are like Baz, often 'regular, working people' who even without being 'under the influence' need to get into a good kicking. The historical reality is, English fans became banned in numerous countries (most of Europe) and interestingly enough often became one of the few male bonding rituals, where race was not always an issue, as long as you could 'deliver a good kicking' you were in- witness the racial mix of Baz and his posse. I use this Film in media classes, especially with international students as a good kick off point for looking at a certain aspect of English culture Zeech