The Green Street Elite are back for a third time with the straight-to-DVD Green Street3: Never Back Down starring Scott Adkins. Review after the jump.
Danny (Scott Adkins), a former leader or West Ham’s hooligan gang, finds out his brother has been killed and returns home in order to find those responsible. He soon bumps into two of his brother’s old friends – Gilly and “Big” John, who invite him to the local pub, with hope that he will once again lead the yob.
“The huge problem with Green Street: Never Back Down is the film having a large identity crisis.”
Football hooliganism is no longer taking place on street corners, but professional meet-ups between real fighters representing their favourite teams are the new thing to do. It’s obvious that the Green Street Elite are not real fighters, Gilly especially looks more at home in a kebab shop than a ring, so Danny decides to train them up and make a winning team out of them.
The huge problem with Green Street: Never Back Down is the film having a large identity crisis. It’s not really sure what type of film it wants to be. It tries to pass itself off as being raw and shocking like I.D, but then morphs itself into a Full Monty type movie before attempting to be a late 80’s Jean-Claude Van Damme film.
GE3: Never Back Down tries hard with the fight scenes, and truth be told some look decent, but only if you forget that this film is supposed to be about hooligans. The film would have worked much better if it was a stand-alone film – dropping the Green Street name and the football teams, and just making it a story about revenge and certain areas of the country meeting up for a fight league.
The film actually looks really great, with nice cinematography and fine colour grading, but then you forget all that when you hear the cheesy soundtrack being played over a series of montages, albeit when the guys are training or in quick snippets of fights. Listen out for the music at the end – without giving too much away – when Danny and Molly (played by the beautiful Kacey Barnfield) walk back into the pub, the song playing makes the film resemble Top Gun.
Overall thoughts:
All in all, it’s worth a watch if you enjoyed the first two and love hearing people shout “you little cunt” or “you muppet” a lot.
Leave a Reply