In a personal essay, a self-confessed insomniac has admitted to making Green Street – the 2005 football hooligan film starring Elijah Wood – a regular late-night watching habit. The writer, who has seen the film "countless times", describes it as having "a compelling awfulness" and says it tends to be consumed in short bursts: "30 minutes here, 45 there, an hour somewhere else."
The essay goes on to spoil the entire plot, which involves Wood's character, Matt, a Harvard student wrongly expelled for cocaine possession, who travels to London and is drawn into West Ham's firm, the Green Street Elite, led by Pete (Charlie Hunnam). A jealous rival, Bovver, accuses Matt of being an undercover journalist, leading to the revelation that Matt's brother-in-law Steve (Marc Warren) was once the firm's feared leader, the Major. After Steve is stabbed during an ambush by Millwall's leader Tommy Hatcher (Geoff Bell), Shannon (Claire Forlani) decides to leave, and the film culminates in a massive fight in which Pete is killed.
The writer offers several reasons for the film's appeal, including West Ham's decision to boast about Wood's involvement while the film was being made at Upton Park, apparently unaware that it was about hooliganism. There is also Hunnam's "astonishing" attempt at a cockney accent, which the writer says "comes from a place even Dick Van Dyke would fear to visit", and the fact that a character is named Bovver. Shannon's behaviour also comes in for criticism, with the writer questioning why she takes her baby to the final showdown and why no one points out that Steve was stabbed while trying to save her "halfwit hobbit brother".
The essay concludes that Green Street is "like Romeo and Juliet with Stella", and that its flaws are integral to its charm. Despite being "crap" in many ways, it remains a guilty pleasure the writer cannot resist.
