The Shouting Men

Most helpful review The Shouting Men

• Road movie brings new dimension to football flicks

   

  By Scott Murray - The Guardian from The Observer - London , 28 Feb 2010

  [Highly rated reviewer]

  The attitudes of football fans have come a long way since the 1970s. British cinema has been slow to recognise this, however, and to this day delivers a constant spirit-sapping stream of fraudulently glamorous bovver movies – usually starring Danny Dyer strutting around like Liam Gallagher with an inflamed coccyx – which depict firms engaging in nawty rumbles, pwopah tear-ups, and the occasional pinging of some nonce. It's a flagrant insult to the intelligence: few other groups are trapped in a similar celluloid timewarp. Do policemen still sport handlebar moustaches? Do office workers hanker after the keys to the executive washroom? Has Hugh Grant recently been asked to look up his leading lady's skirt like a latter-day Robin Askwith? The Shouting Men is a first serious tilt at trying to drag the football fan flick into the 21st century. The tale of a group of Gillingham fans thrown together in a minibus on an FA Cup quarter-final awayday to Newcastle, the film begins with ... well, a proper nawty rumble. But the fight is not quite as it seems: instigated by Terry, a wheelchair-bound version of Trainspotting's pub nutter Begbie (played with a light comic touch by co-writer Matt Daniel-Baker), the bother quickly peters out, with put-upon social worker Rod (co-writer Warren Llambias) inadvertently on the receiving end. Soon enough it becomes clear that The Shouting Men inhabits a world closer to Brassed Off and The Full Monty than The Football Factory or The Firm. One-man force of nature Terry aside, the fans are forced to pull together as their journey first descends into farce, then plummets into something altogether grimmer. As much a road movie as a football film, it's a testament to working-class solidarity. It's funny, too, with a delicious self-deprecating cameo from John Barnes, proving he can read a script better than an autocue. Problem is, the bus contains too many characters with too many pressing problems, and 90 minutes is simply not enough time in which to tell all their stories properly, never mind engage with any of them. Only Dudley Sutton's straight-talking granddad Charlie, the moral ballast of the film, offers any sort of emotional grit. This would be an almost fatal failing in a movie with a charmless premise and script but The Shouting Men breezily survives the problem thanks to the warmth, love and respect it shows both its characters and football fans in general. Scott Murray - The Observer/ Guardian

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