THERE HAVE, in recent years, been few less welcome developments than the rise of the football hooligan movie. Not that the makers of Awaydayswould see their film in those terms.
Set on Merseyside during the artistically fecund post-punk years (the two heroes meet at an Echo and the Bunnymen gig and smoke dope beneath a Big in Japan poster) this film of Kevin Sampson’s cult novel has an inflated sense of its own importance. When they’re not kicking Chelsea fans in the testicles, the lads take time to stare morosely at the Liver Building while saying unimportant things in quasi- Shakespearian blank verse.
Made on a low budget by people off the telly, the film details the relationship between Carty (Nicky Bell), an office worker whose mum has just died, and an emotionally volatile, sexually uncertain young drug user named Elvis (Liam Boyle). To this point, Carty has lived a largely mundane life, but friendship with Elvis leads him into football-related violence, vaguely homoerotic discomfort and a great deal of pretentious muttering. "Where will it end?" Elvis, quoting Joy Division's Day of the Lords, ponders over and over again.
There is a decent film struggling to kick its way out of Awaydays. The post-punk milieu has ( Controlnoted) yet to be fully explored in the movies. But this leaden, indifferently acted film never shakes off its budgetary restraints, nor rises above its desperately hackneyed structure. The football scenes are hilariously under- populated, the accents meander from the Wirral to the Wash, and the occasional avant-garde flourishes seem utterly half-baked.
To summarise (sustaining the Liverpudlian new wave theme), Awaydayssounds more like a Flock of Seagulls than it does The Teardrop Explodes.
Directed by Pat Holden. Starring Nicky Bell, Liam Boyle, Stephen Graham, Holly Grainger 18 cert, Cineworld, Dublin, 105 min
