Doug Allen | Through the Shattered Lens

Back in the day, The Guvnors were one of the most feared and powerful firms around. Based in London, this group of football hooligans were famous for the brutality of their fights. More than 20 years later, they’ve all retired from hooliganism and, more or less, gone on to live normal lives. (One of them is a cop!) Their former leader, Mitch (Doug Allen), preaches non-violence and worries about his son copying his past mistakes. When he runs into the former members of a rival firm at a soccer game, he makes a point of shaking hands with them. The past is over.

When young drug dealer Adam (Harley Sule) takes over a London manor estate, he is eager to fight the former members of the Guvnors so that he can establish that he and his gang are now in charge of the neighborhood. Mitch tries to ignore him until a former Guvnor, Mickey (David Essex), is murdered in his home. Mitch gets the old firm back together again for one last brawl.

Also know as Hoodies vs Hoodlums, The Guvnors is gritty but contrived, with action that plays out at a slow pace while managing to hit just about urban gang movie cliche imaginable. There was a lot of potential to the idea of Mitch getting the old gang back together again but it doesn’t happen until nearly an hour into this 95-minute movie so, with the exception of a sepia-toned flashback, we don’t really get much of an idea of who these people were in the past. Doug Allen project quite authority as Mitch but rapper Harley Sule (credited here as Harley Sylvester) is unimpressive in the role of Adam. He doesn’t come across as being a dynamic enough leader to take over a manor estate, let alone defeat a group of middle-aged football hooligans.

Despite a premise with a lot of kick, The Guvnors misses the goal.

Dom (Calum MacNab) is a working class teenager living in London sometime in the 80s. (The music on the soundtrack is early 80s but the clothing and the haircuts are all late 80s so who knows what the specific year is supposed to be.) A chance meeting with the charismatic Bex Bessell (Paul Anderson) leads to Dom getting involved with Bex’s football firm. A supporter of West Ham United, Bex and his group of football hooligans travel across the UK, engaging in fights with other firms. Despite the fact that their lives seem to be structured around it, nobody in these firms seems to really care much about football. Instead, it’s all about the fighting.

At first, Dom is happy to be a member of the firm. It gives him something to do in his spare time and the other members of the group all seem to like him. Bex takes him under his wing and soon, Dom is even starting to dress like Bex. However, as Bex becomes more and more violent and grows obsessed with defeating Yeti (Daniel Mays), the leader of a rival firm, Dom starts to realize that he needs to find a way out.

The Firm is a loose remake of Alan Clarke’s 1989 film of the same title, which featured Gary Oldman giving one of the best performance of his career as Bex. The original version was a character study of Bex, who was presented as being a newly minted member of the middle class and who was addicted to the rush of being a weekend hooligan. The remake focuses on Dom, who was a minor character in the original. If the original was meant to be a socio-political critique of the UK in the 80s, the remake is a coming-of-age story that almost feels nostalgic. Dom eventually realizes that being a football hooligan isn’t for him but the remake seems to suggest that he’ll always value the memories.

The remake can’t really compare to the original, mostly because the remake doesn’t have Gary Oldman’s ferocious performance or Alan Clarke’s focused and gritty direction. Taken on its own, though, the remake is not bad. Calum MacNab is likable and relatable as Dom and Paul Anderson gives a good performance as Bex. Anderson doesn’t try to imitate Oldman but instead brings his own spin to the character. At first, Anderson’s Bex seems as if he’s considerably more buffoonish than Oldman’s Bex but, in the context of the remake, it works. In the remake, it’s easy to underestimate Bex but give him a strange look or say the wrong thing and he’ll headbutt you just as quickly the Gary Oldman did to anyone who crossed him in the original. The remake doesn’t have the original’s political subtext. Instead, director Nick Love focuses more on historical nostalgia, stylized fight scenes, and the camaraderie that Dom initially finds in the firm. The fights in the original were brutal and not always easy to watch. The fights in the remake are exciting, up until it becomes obvious that Bex is losing his mind.

The remake of The Firm doesn’t do much to improve on the other but, when taken on its own terms, it’s a watchable story of football hooliganism.