Cass

Posted on: 5th August 2008  |

Director: Jon S. Baird
Starring: Nonso Anozie, Natalie Press, Leo Gregory
UK Release date: 1 August 2008
Certificate: 18 (124 mins)

This film about football hooliganism should be better than the others, and not just because that gormless Danny Dyer is nowhere to be seen.  It’s based on the true story of Karol ‘Cass’ Pennant, a black boy with a girl’s name, who was raised by an elderly white couple in 1960s east London and became a head hooligan with a West Ham United firm.  This should be an insightful story with something to say about identity, about violence, about the blind loyalty football seems to encourage, but it isn't.  Cass is merely about a thug who wants credit for all sorts of unworthy things: getting “respect” from white working class football fans in racist Britain, loving his ol’ mum, and ultimately, for not killing or beating people up any more.  You’re not supposed to murder!  You're not supposed to smash people’s faces in! You’re supposed to love your mother! And who cares that some well-built, 6'5" bloke managed to gain a fearsome reputation for violence!?  If he was 5'2" and blind with cerebral palsy and then became a notorious thug, perhaps, just maybe there would be some real achievement involved.  As it is, this film tries so hard to make you like its protagonist, to celebrate his mostly insignificant exploits and present him as a hero that you can’t help but think of Cass Pennant (upon whose autobiography this film is based) as being desperately insecure, despite all the bravado.

The film opens in 1993.  Cass is gunned down and his pompous voice over speaks of violence being “all part of the game... until nahh!”  We jump back to his childhood and the VO continues to guide us with varying success.  After some racist bullying, the ten year old Cass is seen scrubbing his arms with soap and what should have been a poignant scene is ruined by the glib narration, “I never did get any whiter!”  This proves typical of the film, as all other interesting parts are delivered with equally simple-minded storytelling.  Its structure is borrowed from Goodfellas, the shooting at the beginning sets up the final act, but it never achieves anything like the frenetic pace or intricate detail of Scorsese’s masterpiece.  A half-hearted attempt is made at depicting the hooligan culture; a patchy soundtrack of reggae pop does an incomplete job of setting the scene.  Likewise, Cass’s gang boast of being the most fashionable hooligans around, but although this may have been true, there is no coherent style in the film.  A much more accurate depiction of this culture can be found in Shane Meadows’ This is England.

The main problem with Cass is that it wants its cake, wants to eat it, but doesn’t want to pay for it.  Cass may renounce violence in the end but the film is so busy justifying hooliganism the rest of the time, his choice to stop seems arbitrary.  The case is made that hooliganism is a healthy outlet for the country’s glut of unemployed young men, or “Maggie's millions” as they are called here too often.  But it also lets the employed off the hook by saying office boys have a right to vent too.  And because firms only fought other firms, those involved were consenting adults and so there were no victims.  Cass even goes so far as to say they didn’t put as much strain on the NHS as drinkers and smokers.  And if all this wasn’t didactic enough, a violent pre-emptive attack on a Newcastle firm in a working men’s club is intercut with Margaret Thatcher talking to the press in her snooty voice, demanding the audience make an emphatic choice; you’re either with us or you’re a puppet of an out-of-touch elite.

The case against hooliganism is never made, not even incidentally.  You’d think all this carnage would see Cass and his two best mates with broken arms or black eyes, but there’s barely a cut or a bruise in the film.  Nearer the end things do get bloodier but this comes from the script raising the stakes, the need for a dramatic climax, and not from an authentic depiction of football violence.  The only gruesome damage we’re shown is the aftermath of a Stanley-knife attack on Cass’s best mate, and that’s used to justify yet another beating.  The trauma of being slashed by knives and the psychological damage of having to live with a horrifically scarred up face is never even addressed.  And for all its political posturing and folk hero sentimentality, the film never ventures into a football stadium where we’d have seen plenty of innocent victims, working class and unemployed ones at that, being terrorized by the selfish brutality of the hooligans. 

So what we are left with is a self-serving, dishonest portrayal of hooliganism that romanticises violence, pays only lip-service to redemption, and cashes in on tedious criminality.



Peter Quinn



 Visit this film's official web site

 

CASS the movie- trailer

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