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''The Firm'' is a 1989 British
made-for-television drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super- ...
directed by
Alan Clarke
Alan John Clarke (28 October 1935 – 24 July 1990) was an English television and film director, producer and writer.
Life and career
Clarke was born in Wallasey, Wirral, England.
Most of Clarke's output was for television rather than cinema, ...
and written by
Al Hunter Ashton
Al Hunter Ashton (26 June 1957 – 27 April 2007), born Alan Hunter, was an English actor and script writer.
Life
Hunter was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, and came from a working-class background. Born Alan Hunter (he later changed his name ...
for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. It stars
Gary Oldman
Gary Leonard Oldman (born 21 March 1958) is an English actor and filmmaker. Known for his versatility and intense acting style, he has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three British Academy F ...
,
Lesley Manville,
Phil Davis,
Charles Lawson and
Steve McFadden
Steve Robert McFadden (né Reid; born 20 March 1959) is an English actor. He is known for his role as Phil Mitchell in the BBC One soap opera '' EastEnders'', which he has played since 1990. He was also the presenter of the game show, ''Brita ...
in his acting debut. The film is based on the activities of the
Inter City Firm
The Inter City Firm (ICF) is an English football hooligan firm associated with West Ham United, which was mainly active in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The name came from the use of InterCity trains to travel to away games. They were the su ...
(billed as the "Inter City Crew")
football firm
Football hooliganism, also known as soccer hooliganism, football rioting or soccer rioting, constitutes violence and other destructive behaviours perpetrated by spectators at association football events. Football hooliganism normally involves ...
of
West Ham United
West Ham United Football Club is an English professional football club that plays its home matches in Stratford, East London. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. The club plays at the London Stadium, hav ...
during the 1970s and 1980s.
The film, which courted controversy on release, has come to be regarded among the finest films on the subject of football hooliganism. It is notable for having almost no musical score or
diegetic
Diegesis (; from the Greek from , "to narrate") is a style of fiction storytelling that presents an interior view of a world in which:
# Details about the world itself and the experiences of its characters are revealed explicitly through narra ...
music, save for
Dean Martin
Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, actor and comedian. One of the most popular and enduring American entertainers of the mid-20th century, Martin was nicknamed "The King of Cool". M ...
's rendition of "
That's Amore
"That's Amore" is a 1953 song by composer Harry Warren and lyricist Jack Brooks, and became a major hit and signature song for Dean Martin, who first recorded and released it that year. ''Amore'' () means "love" in Italian.
History
The song ...
" over the opening titles. Oldman's performance has been hailed as one of the greatest of his career.
Plot
Clive Bissel (nicknamed "Bex", or "Bexy") is a married man with a baby son. He is the leader of a hooligan firm known as the ICC (Inter City Crew). His wife no longer approves of his activities as a football hooligan, which contrast to his respectable job as an estate agent. Even when his baby son injures himself with a craft knife Bexy has carelessly left lying around, he is unwilling to give up violence as he admits it gives him a "buzz". Conversely, Bexy's father shows acceptance of his son's lifestyle, happily taking a group photograph of the 'tooled up' gang and boasting of similar activities in his own era. However, he feels that Bex and his friends have gone soft because they now use weapons and worry too much about strategy, instead of just getting on with fighting rival mobs.
The film begins with a rival gang called "The Buccaneers" vandalising Bexy's
Ford Sierra XR4x4 and spraying graffiti in a football dressing room while Bexy and his mates are playing football. Bexy's nemesis and leader of the Buccaneers, Yeti, then drives a white
Volkswagen Golf GTi
Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a global brand post-W ...
cabriolet across the football pitch.
With an imminent international football tournament in Holland, Bexy wants to form a 'National Firm' - comprising several rival gangs - big enough to take on the well organised and large international hooligan groups. Bexy meets leaders from other firms in the
Tower Hotel in London, including the Buccaneers. The other gangs like the idea, but do not like the idea of Bexy being top boy. The rival firms then agree to fight each other in order to determine who will lead the new, amalgamated firm into Europe.
Bex and his fellow hooligans only possess any kind of social status amongst their own groups, and Bex relishes being looked up to and admired by the younger men in his own firm. Bexy used his natural leadership qualities to cajole and encourage his peers, and uses intimidation to cement his position as leader of the ICC. These young men think of themselves as important, respected figures in their local community, but Bexy's wife tells him that the truth is somewhat different. Everyone thinks of him as a joke, she says, but because they fear his violent nature, few are willing to point out to him that he is not the working class hero he thinks he is.
The ICC survive violent clashes with the other gangs, but must still defeat the Buccaneers. Bexy is relishing the chance to defeat Yeti. Bexy beats up Yeti during the ICC's clash with the Buccaneers. In his last moments, Bexy expresses astonishment and disbelief that Yeti has a gun, and says 'Oh, come on!' before Yeti pulls the trigger.
The closing scene depicts the surviving ICC members in a pub, honouring Bexy as a hero. They claim, when they are fighting European firms at the forthcoming tournament, they will be doing so in memory of their dead leader. The hooligans from three different firms, who were fighting each other not long ago, agree that Bex was a visionary who brought them together, giving him legendary status, and that his death will not make them change their behaviour, as they vow to continue.
In the film's closing moments, the hooligan actors begin to attack the camera crew, throwing their drinks and chanting aggressively, thereby
breaking the fourth wall
Breaking or breakin' may refer to:
Arts
* Breakdancing (also breaking), an athletic style of street dance
* '' Breakin, a 1984 American breakdancing-themed musical film
* "Breakin, a twelfth-season episode of the American animated television ...
and demonstrating that the events of the film are not entirely fictional.
Cast
Production
Alan Clarke had been making a series of challenging and complex films throughout the 80s, partly influenced by the use of the then-pioneering
Steadicam
Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizer mounts for motion picture cameras invented by Garrett Brown and introduced in 1975 by Cinema Products Corporation. It was designed to isolate the camera from the camera operator's movement, keeping th ...
. In 1998, dramatist and author David Hare commented that "Alan believes in a style which I describe as being a sort of democratic camera
..''The Firm'' is plainly the climax of the style and I think the masterpiece." In keeping with earlier films like ''
Scum'' and ''
Made in Britain
''Made in Britain'' is a 1983 British television play written by David Leland and directed by Alan Clarke. It follows a 16-year-old racist skinhead and his constant confrontations with authority figures. It was broadcast on ITV on 10 July 19 ...
'', ''The Firm'' focuses primarily on characters who can be seen as lacking in redemptive qualities and are self-destructive.
Writer
Al Hunter Ashton
Al Hunter Ashton (26 June 1957 – 27 April 2007), born Alan Hunter, was an English actor and script writer.
Life
Hunter was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, and came from a working-class background. Born Alan Hunter (he later changed his name ...
partially based the script on his own experiences, having been a member of a "firm" himself for some years.
The film itself was filmed in and around
Thamesmead
Thamesmead is an area of south-east London, England, straddling the border between the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Bexley. It is located east of Charing Cross, north-east of Woolwich and west of Erith. It mainly consi ...
in the spring of 1988; Clarke was able to persuade Gary Oldman to take the lead role of Bex whilst the part of Sue was played by Oldman's then-wife Lesley Manville. As Oldman would later comment in 1998 "Alan
..was a great one for discovering people" and ''The Firm'' features a number of actors whose profiles would become significantly more raised in the 1990s including Steve McFadden (later to play Phil Mitchell in ''
EastEnders
''EastEnders'' is a Television in the United Kingdom, British soap opera created by Julia Smith (producer), Julia Smith and Tony Holland which has been broadcast on BBC One since February 1985. Set in the fictional borough of Walford in the Ea ...
''), Charles Lawson (later Jim MacDonald in ''
Coronation Street
''Coronation Street'' is an English soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960. The programme centres around a cobbled, terraced street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford.
Orig ...
'') and Steve Sweeney (later Plank in ''
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
''Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'' is a 1998 British black comedy crime film written and directed by Guy Ritchie, produced by Matthew Vaughn and starring an ensemble cast featuring Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Nick Moran, Steven Ma ...
''). The child of Bex and Sue is played by the infant son of
Janine Duvitski
Janine Duvitski (born Christine Janine Drzewicki; 28 June 1952) is a British actress, known for her roles in the BBC television sitcom series '' Waiting for God'', ''One Foot in the Grave'' and ''Benidorm''. Duvitski first came to national atte ...
whom Clarke had worked with for ''Diane'' (1975).
The meeting of the three separate firms was filmed at the Tower Hotel on Tower Bridge; during the filming, a genuine fight started to occur between various members of the cast, resulting in some damage to the hotel itself.
''The Firm'' was Alan Clarke's final film; producer
David M. Thompson
David Marcus Thompson (born 18 July 1950 in Hackney, London) is a British film and television producer, and the editor of several books about film directors.
Overview
Thompson worked for the BBC from 1978 as a film programmer and documentary ...
noted in a 1998 interview, "it was during the shooting of ''The Firm'' that Alan complained of backache. I remember vividly driving him to his osteopath. Of course, it wasn't backache at all." During the following year, Clarke was diagnosed with cancer, which would eventually result in his death in 1990.
Reception and legacy
''The Firm'' proved controversial,
and has been both celebrated and condemned for its violent content.
Tom Dawson in ''
The List'' reported that it "is widely considered to be the toughest and most insightful screen depiction of football hooligans". ''
Vice
A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character t ...
'' critic Harry Sword wrote that "''The Firm'' remains the definitive celluloid document on football hooliganism: a panoramic masterpiece that captured a world of vicious violence and material aspiration".
Philip French
Philip Neville French OBE (28 August 1933 – 27 October 2015) was an English film critic and radio producer. French began his career in journalism in the late 1950s, before eventually becoming a BBC Radio producer, and later a film crit ...
in ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' described the film as "by some way the best movie on the subject of football hooliganism and a key text on the subject of
Thatcher's Britain."
Film4
Film4 is a British free-to-air television network owned by Channel Four Television Corporation launched on 1 November 1998, devoted to broadcasting films. While its standard-definition channel is available on Freeview and Freesat platforms ...
hailed ''The Firm'' as a "brilliant and compelling drama" that features Oldman "at his visceral, intense best". Josh Winning of ''
Total Film
''Total Film'' is a British film magazine published 13 times a year (published monthly and a summer issue is added every year since issue 91, 2004, which is published between July and August issue) by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched ...
'' observed its "unflinching depictions of violence" along with Clarke's "layered, fearless approach", and named Oldman's "stunning" performance as the best of his career.
[Winning, Josh]
Best Movies: The film chameleon's greatest moments
''Total Film
''Total Film'' is a British film magazine published 13 times a year (published monthly and a summer issue is added every year since issue 91, 2004, which is published between July and August issue) by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched ...
''. 11 April 2011. Retrieved 14 April 2011. Matthew Thrift of the
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
in 2018 wrote that Bissell "remains probably Gary Oldman's greatest screen performance".
''The Firm'' has been described as a
cult classic
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
.
Home media releases
The film was first released on VHS on 21 Oct 1996 in a double pack with the similarly themed ''
I.D.'', with a standalone release following a few years later. A DVD was first released by Prism Leisure on 2 Feb 2004. The film has been sold as part of numerous box-sets, often packed in with other films of a similar nature or from director Clarke. On 10 Sep 2007 a special edition DVD (released in collectible
SteelBook
Optical disc packaging is the packaging that accompanies CDs, DVDs, and other formats of optical discs. Most packaging is rigid or semi-rigid and designed to protect the media from scratches and other types of exposure damage.
Jewel case
...
packaging) was released by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. Extra features on the special edition include:
*An introduction to the film by