On reading this title, most people will immediately think of the 1993 American film starring Tom Cruise, but the film referred to here is a very British one, made for TV in 1988 by Alan Clarke. Clarke’s most successful films have been about angry and violent young men and I consider The Firm to be his final masterpiece (he died of cancer in 1990).

Gary Oldman plays Bex Bissell, a successful estate agent living in the London suburbs with his wife (Lesley Manville) and kid. However, he also leads a ‘firm’ of football hooligans, setting up ‘rumbles’ (fights) with rival hooligan gangs in London and Birmingham and inducing fear in all who know him, friend or foe. Oldman is totally in his element here. His portrayal of Bex is so intensely angry and unpredictable that you cannot help but be scared of him. The hatred that he spits out as he practices killing a rival gang-leader with a metal rod on a pillow still makes me pull back from the TV even after having seen this film about 6 times.

Clarke makes no attempt to explain the characters’ addiction to extreme violence except for a comment made by Bex during an argument with his wife about his extra-curricular activities: “I need the buzz!” he explains, to which she angrily replies, “Well buy a bloody beehive then!”. Lesley Manville is wonderful (as usual) as Bex’s wife and she is one of the few people who dares to stand up to him.

Since 1988 it has become apparent that the most violent of football hooligans are’t the unkempt, uneducated yobs they were thought to be in the 1970′s. They are often well-dressed men with good jobs who travel first class on the train to get to a match in time to beat a rival group to a pulp. Clarke shows us this reality in an almost documentary-like style, even suggestively crossing the line between drama and documentary in the final scene when we actually see the camera crew being taunted and cajoled by the firm itself.

As with many of Clarke’s films (including Made in Britain), this is shot chiefly on grey days in dreary English surroundings, which gives it a depressingly realistic atmosphere for 1980′s Britain. The storyline gets a little confusing sometimes as it’s hard to keep track of who belongs to which firm, but that doesn’t detract from the most important and disturbing aspect of the film: violence simply as a hobby.

Be Sociable, Share!

•