How you take toward the latest bit of aggro from Football Factory director Nick Love depends entirely on your tolerance for hearing phrases like “Oi, you cants”. Or your sympathy with sentiments such as “paedophiles are running our fucking playgrounds”. Oultlaw, a decidedly dodgy paean to vigilante justice, is unlikely to win many neo-liberal friends but will surely fare better as an after-pub DVD in the not distant future.
Danny Dyer, resident Love muse and Hammer Of The Manx, stars as a young office drone who is about to get married to Some Bird. Which one? Don’t matter.This is a Boy’s Own flick. The important thing is that DD is bullied in office and frequently dreams that he is being assaulted by Burberry capped ruffians. Elsewhere, some hoods put a knife in the pregnant belly of a posh barrister (James). Another bloke (Friend) is wronged when the thugs who left him scarred get early release from jail.
What’s going on here? Well, as returning Gulf War veteran Sean Bean explains, England has gone to hell in a hand basket. You want justice? You better sort it out yourself mate. Under Mr. Bean’s tutelage, our victims are transformed from quivering untermenschen into a private army. Meanwhile, a sympathetic copper (Hoskins) offers to feed them the names of “paedophiles, dealers, junkies, scum, cunts.”
In this part of the world where collusion between the authorities and lawless oiks isn’t entirely unheard of, we can probably predict that things will go pear-shaped for this motley militia. Sure enough, we soon hear Sean Harris baying for the blood of “your Gary Glitters, your grasses, your muslims.” Worse, because all coppers are “so bent they couldn’t lie straight in bed,” our A-Team wannabes quickly wind up on the ‘wanted’ list.
It might sound like a low-brow revenge fantasy, a Kill Bill for boys, but Love has plenty of interesting, if dangerous things to say about modern masculinity, societal breakdown and legal iniquities. A British cut-price Fight Club, with any luck, the film will stimulate debate among those who demur when Sean Harris says “I’d send ‘em a fucking nail bomb.” Happily, everyone can agree on the film’s fantastic sound design which ensures that all punches are delivered with a vicious crunch. Ouch. Let’s be having you...