DVD Review: Rise And Fall Of The White Collar Hooligan

If there was ever a reason to use the trades description act on a film it has to be for The Rise And Fall of The White Collar Hooligan. Paul Tanter‘s ‘Gritty’ British gangster film isn’t really about football nor hooligans (apart from the first 2 minutes of the film), so what is it all about? Your guess is good as mines.

Mike (Nick Nevern) is an unemployed, desperate for work who bumps into Eddie (Simon Phillips) an old friend just as a football hooligan fight is about to break out. The pair arranges to meet later that night and when they do Eddie has a new business opportunity for Mike which would provide him with cash in hand working as a courier, with no questions asked. After concerns in what he might be handling are drugs, Mike is relieved to learn that Eddie’s packages are for equipment involved in Credit card fraud with the only ‘victims’ been the banks themselves. Seduced by the sex, drugs, money and the lifestyle that comes with the territory, Mike ignores the warnings despite the fact his mate Eddie is in the pocket of a notorious London Gangster (Billy Murray). As he misses the warnings things start to spiral out of control forcing Mike to make life changing decisions with repercussions that will affect everyone close to him.

This film is utter crap. A unoriginal film that’s brings nothing new to an already overcrowded London Gangster sub-genre, Lock Stock Two Smoking Barrels/Snatch is the films that the current crop of films should be modelling themselves to get entertainment value into their films as its leagues ahead of the bunch. The dialogue is cheesy, awkward the film has no structure and feels like montage clips of the lead actors making cards, taking drugs, stealing money from ATM’s, doing nothing special for the films 78 minutes running time, something a better film would do in a few minutes building up to something bigger better and more dramatic which this one fails to miss. There is nothing remotely memorable about this film apart from the enjoyment of taking the film out of the DVD player, 78 minutes of my time which could have been used more constructively. To show how bad this film is there is a scene they go to Manchester which like London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow all have distinctively recognisable accents but for some strange reason, a Mancunian in this film sounds like a Cockney Geezer!

It’s obvious The Rise And Fall Of The White Collar Hooligan has a targeted demographic, the Nuts/Sun reader which looking at it from that perspective this film maybe of some interest to you. To the rest of us, this will feel like the rejects from Towie attempting to re-enact The Goodfellas! If this is the future of British film we’re in a sad sorry state as this is simply Danny Dyer (dire)! Talking about the man himself why isn’t he in this? I suppose that’s one positive note for this film Danny Dyer isn’t in it and because of that I’ll give the film a bonus mark.