Film / The Football Factory

This is England's worst nightmare. Enjoy it.

"There's nothing different 'bout me. I'm just another bored male approaching 30 in a dead-end job who lives for the weekend — casual sex, watered-down lager, heavily-cut drugs ... and occasionally, kicking the fuck out of someone."

—Tommy Johnson

The Football Factory is a 2004 British film, based on the award-winning 1996 novel of the same name by John King, which was the first story of the Football Factory trilogy. It stars Danny Dyer, Frank Harper, Tamer Hassan, Neil Maskell, Dudley Sutton and Roland Manookian, and was directed by Nick Love (yes, that Nick Love).

The novel series centres around the extreme fans of Association Football, mostly the obsessed fans of British Footy Teams, to the point of forming large gangs (called "firms") in their neighbourhoods to seek out and attack fans of rival teams. Late-20s lowlife Tommy Johnson (Danny Dyer) is a member of a firm that supports Chelsea FC, and is desperate to get himself out of the lifestyle, despite his enjoyment of womanizing, cocaine and supporting his favourite team every week.

He struggles to try and escape it due to the persistence of the firm firm (deputy) leader Billy Bright (Frank Harper), whose life seems to be falling apart as much as Tommy's, and his best friend Rod (Neil Maskell), who shows no sign of being as damaged as the people around him. Johnson is convinced to give it up by his veteran grandfather Bill Farrell (Dudley Sutton), who plans to move to Australia with his best friend Albert, but cannot escape because of his depression over Albert's death and his grandson's wild and illegal activities.

After getting into a few bar brawls, Tommy realises that it's time to leave the hooliganism behind, but an incident with the brother of Millwall firm leader Fred (Tamer Hassan) leaves him in Millwall's wanted books. He also has to look out for the impressionable teenagers Zeberdee (Roland Manookian) and Raff (Calum McNab), who desperately want to be members of the Chelsea firm.

The Football Factory is somewhat of a cult classic to some, often being the Ur-Example of hooliganism and fanclub extremism in British soccer, along with The Firm and Green Street. The film led to having a spin-off documentary series called The Real Football Factories, in which a few actors from the movie visit areas around Europe that have similar football firms and fans like in this movie.

Meanwhile, the book series has two other stories in the same universe: Headhunters and England Away, which began the story of five other football-mad fans, who then meet with Tommy and the Chelsea firm to watch England play against Germany.

It is also worth noting that Rockstar Games co-produced this film with Vertigo Films. Yes, that Rockstar Games.

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Tropes in the movie include:

• Acrofatic: Most of the men in the firms are either pot-bellied, chunky or really skinny, yet they can run and fight people like athletes.
• Adapted Out:
  • In the novel, the head of Chelsea's firm was a black man, nicknamed Black Paul, much to the annoyance of Billy. In the movie, it's a chubby white man called Harris that often sits in a dimly-lit room with five other people, playing poker. Billy's hatred of him is still there, but it's over his jealousy of not being a role model to Zeberdee and Raff.
  • Tommy and Rod had much more friends that they partied with.
• Adaptation Personality Change: A couple of characters in the movie are completely different in the novel.
  • Billy was an orphan who had rage issues throughout his childhood, and has racist and extreme xenophobic views — shown through the annoyance of having a black man being in charge of his firm. He wasn't married with children and had a broken arm.
  • Rod has sex with a stripper and is constantly mocked for being a single man. In the movie, he is desperate to start an air conditioning business and secretly has a girlfriend. Said girlfriend read out Billy and Tom's charges after they were arrested outside the Liverpool match.
• Aerith and Bob: Bill, Billy, Rod, Tommy, Fred, Raff ... and Zeberdee?
• Bandaged Face: The kid that appears in Tommy's nightmare. Then it's revealed to be Zeberdee with a wound in his right temple.
• Bar Brawl: Tommy and Rod get into one with Millwall FC fans that catch them celebrating over the announcements of Chelsea being qualified for The FA Cup.
• Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults: Although not in a bathroom stall, when doing a line of cocaine by the urinals, Billy overhears a conversation from a room next door through the air vents. It's a meeting with Harris (the actual head of the Chelsea firm) and his other team members, who are moaning about Billy's disgusting behaviour and mouthy attitude, and suggest demoting him or throwing him out of the group.
• Beard of Sorrow: Tommy has stubble in most of his appearances on screen, probably to reflect how terrible his personal life is. Funnily enough, the people that arguably have a worse life than him have managed to use a razor every day.
• Berserk Button:
  • Bill cannot stand racism and snaps at all the characters that make prejudice and discriminative remarks. Zeberdee and Raff's taunts and racial slurs at a Sikh father and son on the bus makes Bill so mad, he screams at them and then has a heart attack. This is also why he loathes Harris and Billy Bright.
    Bill: They're foolish men, Tom. Harris thinks we're connected 'cos I fought in the war. What he doesn't understand is, I fought to stop people like him with their fascist opinions. Billy's a fucking idiot.
  • Billy jumps on Fred after being accused of being a domestic abuser to his wife. He also hates being bullied about his weight.
• Big Brother Instinct: Fred, who wants Tommy dead after an encounter that leaves his brother Terry knocked unconscious with a cricket bat.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Billy's sons. They probably learnt their anti-social behaviour from their father.
• Butt-Monkey: Zeberdee to Billy, mostly because Billy is jealous that he's not Zeb's role model.
• Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: The quiet leader of Chelsea's firm Harris, vs the loud-mouthed lower-authority Billy.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: After discovering that Zeberdee and Raff broke into his house, and stole his phone, Billy drags them back to his home and makes his two sons throw real darts at them to make them confess. Some of them actually stick in their bodies.
• Country Matters: A lot of this.
• Dad the Veteran: Bill, who was one of the soldiers that fought at Normandy on D-Day.
• Description Cut: After the announcement of Chelsea and Millwall playing each other in the FA Cup, at the Chelsea/Millwall Youth Team match, Tommy's voice over says that Billy and Fred have settled their difference in order to be dignified in front of their children. Cue the two men hurling insults, taunting, and even wrestling on the pitch.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Tommy, despite getting getting a kick out of his gangster-like life. Ironically, the firms were created for fans because of this trope.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Firms seem to be portrayed as a Mafia-like business, with every member becoming a spy, attacking rival fans they've caught, and even murdering them. In the movie, Chelsea firm leader Harris is sitting in a dark room with five other people, smoking and gambling, talking about people in his firm that he doesn't like, much like a don.
• Driver of a Black Cab: A Running Gag shows the characters being driven around London by a taxi driver that makes controversial and racist comments throughout the journey, before being yelled at to shut up by the passengers for being annoying.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: It's hard to believe that men who want fans of other football teams dead, are either married, have children, or even look after vulnerable relatives.
• Evil Brit: Unsurprisingly, almost every single character.
• Fat Bastard: Billy Bright. He doesn't like people calling him this, though.
• Football Hooligans: The most defiant trope of all listed on this page. One of the only things that the movie is remembered for. Oh, and Danny Dyer.
• Foreshadowing: Tommy's recurring dream of being battered by Stoke City fans. When he is left to die, a person with a bandaged face finds him and asks to help him. On the third time of the dream, the figure removes their bandage to reveal themselves to be Zeberdee with a large bloody cut in the side of his head.
• From the Mouths of Babes: Most of the children that appear in the movie are either pottymouths, cheeky, or get into inappropriate circumstances.
• Gilligan Cut: When getting ready to board the Chelsea fans' coach to watch the team play Liverpool FC, Tommy's voiceover says that he hopes to get some sleep on the long journey to the stadium. Cue the next scene full of drunken misbehaviour, loud beer toastings, singing football chants and cocaine abuse.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Billy, towards Harris. Raff and Zeberdee see Harris as a role model, and try everything to impress him. One wonders whether he secretly enjoyed using his sons to torture the two boys.
• Grumpy Old Man: Bill, on the count that he's a lonely widower with hooligans Rod and Tommy as friends. He hopes to leave England to live in Australia.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Billy always seems to be annoyed or grumpy over something, and the level just increases more and more whenever Fred taunts about their teams possibly playing each other in The FA Cup.
• Henpecked Husband: When Rod officially gets a girlfriend, he becomes this towards her. This annoys Tommy.
  Tommy: Why is it that when your best mate meets a girl, he quickly changes into a complete fucking melt and acts like he's only known you for ten minutes?
• Heroic BSoD: Billy, after overhearing Harris and his team moan about his anti-social behaviour.
• How We Got Here: The film opens with Tommy Johnson "three weeks from now, nearly dead", lying on the ground and being beaten to a bloody pulp by Millwall hooligans, with the rest of the film leading up to that point.
• Hypocritical Humor: Tommy imagines a high court judge using this against Billy in court.
  Judge: What's wrong with you, Bright? You're forty years old, and still you offend persistently. I see children in this courtroom with more common sense than you.
  Billy: [crossly] What d'you say?
  Judge: [tightly] Don't you dare answer me with that insolent tongue of yours, you fat fucking slob!
  (Billy lashes out and throws his hands around the judge's neck)
• Hypocrite: Fred accuses Billy of this. The two men agreed to combine companies in order for Billy to regain financial stability, but Billy is xenophobic towards people of Fred's race.
  Fred: Well how's it feel doing business with a Turk, when you're supposed to be right-wing? Scooby-Doo's less confused than you, you prick!
• Joins to Fit In: Teenagers Zeberdee and Raff are desperate to be part of the Chelsea firm, and do crazy things, such as breaking into a house (later found out to be Billy's) and attacking a Yardie trying to sell items to children at a playground.
• London Gangster: Practically every character in the Chelsea and Millwall gangs behave like these.
• Manly Tears: At the end of the movie, Raff and Zeberdee tell Tommy that Billy had been thrown in prison for the riot. They were giggling about him crying as he was dragged away.
• Meaningful Name: Zeberdee got his nickname because he is a drug addict. Considering that he's named after a character from The Magic Roundabout that was half-man half-spring, he is probably hyperactive when he's high.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Tom's failed one-night stand (in which he and Rod picked up two women, escorted them home, and then fell asleep on their beds before they can do anything) ends as this. He wakes up to see a man waving a knife in his face, who is then knocked out by Rod with a cricket bat. The two men run out with pillows and bedsheets wrapped around them (possibly because they either didn't have time to put their clothes, or couldn't find them), leaving Tom to arrive at the garden centre late, wrapped in a purple sheet. Despite trying to hide himself behind shelves, Billy is not impressed.
• Oh, Crap!: Usually occurred when fans from certain firms are outnumbered when they spot rivals in the street.
  • When Rod cheers for Chelsea in a nightclub after hearing that the team's going to play against Millwall FC, about five men turn and glare at him and Tommy in disgust. Cue both men being chased down the high street.
  • After seeing Chelsea play in the North, Billy spots about four rival fans shopping in a nearby petrol station. He, Tommy and Rod duck behind a car and crawl through the car park in order to get past them. They stupidly ambush the four men, and all of them are arrested for anti-social behaviour.
• Older Than They Look: Zeberdee looks and acts like a teenager, however his birth year is given as 1980^* incidentally, the same year Zeberdee's actor Roland Manookian was born in the epilogue, making him 23 or 24 throughout the film's events.
• One-Steve Limit: Billy is the head of the Chelsea firm, whereas Bill is the World War Two veteran.
• Oop North: A Chelsea soccer match takes place in the north, in which the Chelsea firm chase away wild northern teenagers.
• Point-and-Laugh Show: The series is portrayed as this to the extreme. The supporters' exaggerated Serious Business attitude of trying to be the fans of the best team in the country/Europe, to the point of attacking outnumbered "rivals" in the street and even hiding when they see a small group of men, is practically laughable. It's probably a Take That! to sports' supporters who take the game too seriously.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "What's happening, Zeber-fucking-dee?"
• Product Placement: Rod is seen playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in one scene - the inevitable result of this film having been partially funded by Rockstar. Funnily enough, said game also features a character voiced by Danny Dyer; apparently Rod hasn't noticed that one of the characters in that game sounds exactly the same as his best mate.
• Race Lift:
  • There was an obvious racial divide in the novels, especially with the Millwall and Chelsea fans: the Millwall fans were mostly Middle-Eastern Britons, whereas the Chelsea fans were all white, but in the movie, both sides have fans of different ethnicities (although Chelsea's side is harder to notice).
  • Also, Chelsea leader Paul (an Afro-Caribbean man) is replaced by Harris (a Caucasian man).
• Real Men Wear Pink: Billy and Fred work alongside each other in a garden centre.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: There are a couple of them in this movie. The most notable one is given to Tommy by a former firm member that works at a florist, who tells him that he's almost 30 and shouldn't be breaking the law continuously.
  Tommy: I got nicked with Bright the other day, kicking off with the OB. You'd have loved it, mate.
  Adam: Nice one, Tom. Sounds really clever. It's not my scene any more.
  Tommy: Yeah, well, I'm just saying.
  Adam: Well, go and say it somewhere else, and don't come down my stall giving it the big 'un.
• Recurring Dreams: Whenever Tommy blacks out, he dreams of being attacked in the street by a rival firm and left for dead, being discovered by a young man with a bandaged face.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Even though they're not rock stars, being in a hooligan firm is portrayed as a wild life full of women, pumping yourself full of euphoric drugs, and getting into clubs with the best DJs around.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Practically everyone in this film (even some of the minor characters) have pottymouths. Billy is the worst of them all.
  Tommy: Billy's extensive vocabulary was never gonna get him into Parliament, was it?
• Smoking Is Cool: It slightly overlaps with Everybody Smokes. The majority of characters on screen are seen with a cigarette, and/or an illegal drug. For a going-away present, Tom gives Bill a spliff.
• Tap on the Head: After Tommy and Rod's attempted one-night stand, Terry, who is holding Tommy at knifepoint, gets whacked on the back of his head by Rod with a cricket bat, and is shortly thereafter put into casualty. However, aside from a bandage on his head, he shows up no worse for wear later on, chasing Tommy and Rod out of the pub with his mates.
• Teens Are Monsters: Zeberdee and Raff in order to get into Billy's good books.
• Those Two Guys:
  • Tommy and Rod.
  • Zeberdee and Raff.
  • Bill and Albert, before the sudden death of Albert.
• Toxic Friend Influence: When eventually hooking up with a stranger, Rod's new girlfriend points out that his hooligan friends were a bad influence on his behaviour and makes him promise that he'll never hang out with them again.
• Villainous Breakdown: Tommy throughout the movie. One incident has him try to confide in Billy as subtly as he can (without sounding like a wimp) by going to a massage parlour with him. When he looks into the beautician's eyes, he sees the bandaged-face kid and flashes of everyone that's doubted his actions, making him shriek all over the building. Billy asks what happened, making Tommy say that the beautician gave him fellatio.
• Villains Out Shopping: When they're not meeting up to support their favourite soccer teams, the members of the Millwall and Chelsea firms spend their weekdays working at petrol stations, car washes and garden centres. Sometimes, working alongside each other!
• Volleying Insults: Fred and Billy, in an infamous scene next to their children's football game.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Tommy wakes up on a sofa, hung over from the night before, with Rod giving him a Death Glare. Tommy doesn't understand why until Rod gives him the reason: Tommy tried to "get off" with Billy Bright's wife Barbara, only to beat her up and break her jaw. Tommy refuses to believe this at first, and calls Zeberdee to try to disprove Rod's claim, only for Zeb to also confirm what happened. Rod tells Tommy that he'll have to go round Bright's house and beg for his life if he wants to spare himself of Billy's wrath, and beg he does. Of course, it turns out to be a prank set up by Bright and Tommy's mates. Tommy is not amused.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The end of the film shows plaques of how the characters ended up. Notably:
  • Billy is jailed for seven years after being caught at the Chelsea/Millwall meet, ironically due to saving Chelsea firm boss Harris from being arrested. If he served his full sentence, he would've been released in 2003.
  • Referring to the point above, Harris gets away with instigating the meet, and still runs Chelsea firm.
  • Although turning out healthy after the Chelsea/Millwall riot, Zeberdee is shot by the Yardie he attacked in the restrooms of the pub. He doesn't survive.
  • Raff is "still a thieving little cunt."
  • Bill eventually emigrates to Australia.
  • Tommy is a rugby fan.
  • Rod quit the firm life and is running an air conditioning business.
• The Yardies: Zeberdee attacks a Yardie trying to sell items to kids in a playground. That same Yardie comes for revenge later on by cornering Zeberdee in the pub restrooms and shooting him to death.
• You and What Army?: Being in the middle of nowhere in the North of England, Zeberdee and Raff are caught by a gang of about eight northern Liverpool fans, who chase them down the motorway when they realise they're supporting Chelsea. The two boys manage to get far enough to catch up with the Chelsea coach, which stops to let out the Chelsea firm, who chases the northern boys away.

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