The Rise and Fall of a White Collar Hooligan   Starring: Nick Nevern, Simon Phillips, Peter Barrett, Ricci Harnett and Billy Murray Momentum Pictures RRP: £12.99 MP1167D Certificate: 18 Available 02 July 2012

Down on his luck Mike Jacobs spends his time engaging in football hooliganism and living off the dole until a chance encounter with an old friend Eddie Hill opens up to possibility to make some money delivering packages. He successfully keeps his mouth shut and is offered full access to the gang’s activity of credit card fraud. However a trip to Paris goes disastrously wrong and Mike finds himself in jail...

The Rise and Fall of a White Collar Hooligan (2012 - 1 hr, 17 min, 55 sec) is a gangster thriller directed by Paul Tanner.

The film follows the fortunes of Mike (Nick Nevern) as he progresses up the rungs of the underworld, getting increasingly over his head, urged on by his friend, Eddie (Simon Phillips). The film’s title is a bit misleading as it only tangentially touches on football hooliganism, nor are there the expected scenes of violence, unless you consider a bunch of shouting men extreme violence. What we have here is more of a character study of a man who isn’t as hard as his posturing and foul mouthed uttering you lead him to believe he is. The trailer doesn’t help matters as it gathers together all the instances of ultra-violence to give a false impression of the film.

As things get more serious, and guns start to become involved, Mike attempts to try and back out, but his associates are not the sort who provide a retirement package unless it comes with concrete boots. On top of his work worries, his relationship with his girlfriend Katie (Rita Ramnani) is put under pressure from his illegal activities.

The problem of Mike as a central character is that he is so unpleasant a person that it is difficult to sympathise with him when it all goes wrong. Whilst the crime is white collar, Mike positively isn’t. That is not to say that Nevern does not play the character with conviction. His friend, Eddie, comes over as a more intelligent player, even knowing when to cut and run. Phillips is the more charismatic of the two and generally steals the scenes the two share.

It’s a fairly short film; if all the ’F’ words had been removes it might have been a lot less. The end result is very tightly scripted and the film engages the attention throughout. It does mix its wit with the drama well, I particularly liked the early scene with Eddie trying to get a job, but I couldn’t help thinking that the similar scene in Trainspotting was funnier and that the general problem with the film. Overall it’s not a bad film and five years ago would have been ahead of the game, but here and now there is little in the film that hasn’t been seen before.

Extras are confined to the Trailer (1 min, 27 sec) and a full length commentary with Paul Tanter, Simon Phillips, Nick Nevern and Jonathan Sothcott. It’s a good natured piece which the four certainly had fun in recording.

In the end I quite liked the film. Whilst it certainly isn’t the most original film I’ve seen, it was well directed and acted, with a good script. It’s a shame they felt they had to market it as a film about football hooliganism, rather than a story of a man who gets over his head in the criminal world.

6

Charles Packer