Film Reviews

The Firm

• Rating:
• Director: Nick Love
• Starring: Calum McNab
• Details: UK / 90mins (18).

Come on then, you facking ****, let's 'ave ya! It's hard to believe that Nick Love hasn't remade/adapted for the big screen 1988's made-for-TV drama, The Firm, before now. With The Football Factory, Goodbye Charlie Bright, The Business and Outlaw on his CV, The Firm's '80s-set violence is right up his street. This time Love has to do without his regular, Danny Dyer, but he's got a look-alike in Calum McNab.

McNab plays Dom, a fresh-faced Londoner caught up in the rough-and-tumble of terrace hooliganism in the early eighties. Looking up to leader Bex (Anderson), whose West Ham firm rivals Daniel Mays' Millwall headhunters, both competing to head up a united front at the (supposed) 1984 European Championships, Dom's world is turned upside down when 'tools' are introduced into their many rucks. Is he man enough to stick it out?

Nick Love could have sleepwalked his way through this remake, which is exactly what he's done. Either the writer-director burned himself out with the ultra violent and edgy Outlaw, his last film, or he's going through the motions here, but The Firm is a very tame effort indeed. Maybe it's boredom and familiarity - how many football hooligan movies are there now? (This year, even?) - but there's not an iota of originality to be found in its threadbare plot. There's no threat or danger to the fight scenes, which Love handles with a very, very jumpy camera that makes the action on screen hard to follow. The dialogue, never one of Love's strongest qualities (but at least it was hard and in your face), is dreadful and could be cut-and-pasted into any other hooligan film. The acting doesn't fair any better, with bona fide talent Mays reduced to an extended cameo.

It's slightly funnier than other hooligan movies with Camille Coduri and Eddie Webber, playing McNab's parents, weighing in with some light comedy. A missed opportunity, Love had the chance to make the quintessential hooligan movie and finally put the sub genre to bed, the director should make a comeback with his next feature, an adaptation of The Sweeney.

Review by Gavin Burke