The Football Factory (2004)
After I.D., no director seemed interested in the idea of another hooligan movie – but all that changed when Nick Love glorified the sordid world of footy violence with his adaptation of the (slightly more responsible) novel, The Football Factory.
Danny Dyer stars as the lad who gets sucked into the world of footy violence, hanging out with the kind of people you try not to look at in pubs. Meanwhile, a pair of old men wander around a council estate.
The characters are mostly likeable, eliciting laughs from the audience while courting their sympathy, while the violence plays out to rock and dance tunes, rarely appearing to be more than ‘just a laugh’.
The reasons for its success are hard to peg – the script is uninspired, it was Danny Dyer’s big break, director Nick Love’s attempted homage to Scorsese was like watching a nursery school production of Citizen Kane – yet The Football Factory was a huge success with Sunday league footballers and men under 30 across the country.