London,

The Firm

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Cert: 18

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Dir: Nick Love. Cast: Paul Anderson, Ebony Gilbert, Ben Shockley, Calum McNab, Joanne Matthews, Daniel Mays

 

Description: During a night out, Dom and best mate Terry foolishly pick a fight with estate agent Bex and his wife Suzy, unaware they are butting heads with the leader of one of the most feared, style-conscious groups of football fans in the city. Realising the error, the boys later beg forgiveness and Bex gradually inducts Don into his inner circle as they plot an attack on arch trivial Yeti and his firm.

Country: UK. 2009. 90mins

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The Firm is never as menacing as it ought to be

 

Seeing red: Bex (Paul Anderson) leads his troops into battle

No harm to Nick Love, but in what sense is this “A Nick Love Film”? Great directors, who often conceived, wrote, directed and birthed their own films — I’m talking about the likes of Jean Renoir and Billy Wilder — never had what is called a possessory credit. They wouldn’t have thanked you for one, either: if you stop and think about it, these camp little credits are an insult to the artistic means by which movies are actually made.

It has now become standard practice in the cinema, where directors barely out of film school have their moniker etched above the title, as if their name alone represents some kind of brand excellence, the stamp of authorship.

I’m all for the art of directing and all for the art of screenwriting, but Nick Love is not the originator of this narrative. He directed it — with style, with a bit of heart, with knowledge and with instinct — but the material was first put into play by Al Ashton, an experienced television writer and actor, and then by Alan Clarke, a genius director. The present film is a remake of their 1988 TV film starring Gary Oldman.

Nick Love, and every other director who agrees to this credit business, will say the producers force the thing on them. It’s a marketing thing. But it’s also a vanity thing and everybody knows it. Love’s remake is a decent movie but it’s not a vision, it’s a rendition and, for those of us who cared about Alan Clarke, and who care about original writing, it’s just wrong to see Love’s name in pink neon, colonising a work that isn’t properly his.

Film is the only one of the arts that allows this sort of baloney. Novelists are the authors of their books. Composers are the originators of their musical scores. But imagine the outcry if Simon Rattle were to advertise Mahler’s Ninth as “A Simon Rattle Symphony”. Unless the director has written the piece and dreamed it into being, it bugs me every time I see one of those poxy credits.They are un-humble, needy, bogus and uncool. Good directors should shun them.

Nick Love has a bit of form when it comes to directing movies set in the chaotic world of sporting rivalry and violent fandom. He directed The Football Factory, an excellent picture adapted by Love from the novel by John King. That film had none of the mad sentiment that can so easily creep into movies involving male camaraderie. It was lean, loud, uncompromising and it got to the heart of the subject. His version of The Firm is a lot thinner. It’s never as menacing as it ought to be and its tone is pure telly. It has strong elements, though, and it’s no criticism to say that, 25 years ago, it would have made a perfectly enjoyable Wednesday Play.

London teenager Dom (Calum McNab) is keen to get in with a bunch of West Ham-supporting casuals led by Bex (Paul Anderson). He learns the lingo and starts wearing the gear, including a bright red tracksuit exactly the same as his hero’s. By day, Bex is an estate agent with a wife and kids, but at weekends he is a nutcase, travelling to football grounds with a gang of thugs to do the damage, as he might say himself. The damage, as Dom quickly learns, involves savage battles against a gang run by his opposite number, Yeti (Daniel Mays). The thing escalates as the rivalry becomes bitter and Dom finds it harder and harder to relate to the people (including himself) who he used to know.

The original TV film had more bite, more surprise, and, as Bex, Gary Oldman seemed much more genuinely psychotic. It also emerged from a deeper social reality in Thatcher’s Britain, a subculture of working-class violence and acquisitiveness that seemed quite new at the time. Under Love’s baton, the story feels more stylish, even comical.

Some of that is just to do with the passing of time: the haircuts, the trainers, the sports gear and the lingo are dated now, and one of the strengths of this film, indeed, is seeing how well the production design comes off. Love has a keen understanding of the urge in young men towards tribal belonging: it’s something he knows better than most directors and he puts it to good use in depicting Dom’s ambition.

The price of that understanding is that the characters are more sympathetic than you feel is credible. Even Yeti, a slash and stab merchant with a ridiculous amount of venom about him, comes over in the end as the kind of guy your granny might like. That’s probably an achievement on the part of Daniel Mays, but it causes you to feel there’s something soft about the film, that it can’t quite face the sometimes blood-curdling brutality of those guys.

But if you stick with the journey, it’s worth it. Calum McNab, who appeared in The Football Factory, has the kind of turncoat empathy that can make him quite compelling to watch. The film is covered in talent, including Love’s, of the sort that makes you look forward to the next thing they do. Here, you feel they have a lot to climb over, but there are scenes where the attempt to get close to something real is powerfully inspired.

In a month when West Ham and Millwall fans have been at each other’s throats, it’s possible that The Firm will prove in the long run to be more than a period piece.

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