D: Philip Davis
S: Reece Dinsdale, Richard Graham, Claire Skinner
Despite obvious intentions to the contrary, this film is best suited to
educational screenings designed to provoke discussion among teenagers. Unfortunately,
the levels of violence and profanity make this unlikely. A German-British
co-production dealing with their greatest common social problem: football
hooliganism, i.d. works well enough to stimulate debate, but falls
short of the study of the inner darkness of the human animal it tries hard
to be.
Arrogant but dedicated detective Reece Dinsdale is sent with three other
officers on an assignment to penetrate the ranks of football hooligans supporting
the fictional Shadwell Town. In the course of his assignment he finds that
total immersion in character is beginning to affect his personal and professional
life, and that perhaps deep down he is a hooligan too. He finds himself
not only enjoying the camaraderie of the communal donnybrook more than the
job of police work, but the thrill of combat and the sense of danger pushes
him further and further away from the 'real' world and into a machismo
fantasy which eventually destroys his ordered, civilised life and his relationships
with 'normal' people, including his suffering wife, Claire Skinner.
A Taxi Driver type descent into the nether regions of the human soul
lies not far from the surface of Philip Davis' film, but Vincent O'Connell's
screenplay (based on a story by James Brannon) tends to go for the obvious
at all points and forces dramatic confrontations which rationalise and over-expose
the issues with heavy exchanges of direct dialogue. The result is never
altogether dramatically engrossing, and the film becomes a studied exercise
in public debate rather than a true cinematic treatise.
On these terms, it succeeds in raising plenty of questions of ethics, morality
and concepts of loyalty and honour (even among brutal savages), but as Dinsdale's
transformation becomes more and more complete, he systematically alienates
every decent, moral character around him (including his partner, Richard
Graham). This means that there is less and less dramatic tension even as
the stakes get higher. We are then not surprised by his total rejection
of society and eventual absorption by the neo-nazi movement. He is by too
unsympathetic to care about anyway, and the result is a sombre nodding of
head and stroking of chin rather than a frisson of recognition.
Part of the problem is Dinsdale himself, who is a little too unhinged to
draw you in. Support from the rest of the cast, including Graham, Sean Pertwee
(seen later in Event Horizon) and Saskia
Reeves, is very good, and the film creates and sustains an authentic atmosphere.
Yet there is a lack of a social context to this atmosphere, giving no real
sense of the working-class milieu these characters are so eager to escape
through their love of football. Dinsdale's rejection of a responsible, middle
class life seems only so much childish stupidity rather than a real tragedy
because of the totality of his retreat into what is essentially a fantasy
world.
At one point, the film seems about to save itself from the obvious as he
is drawn into the sinister edges of a criminal conspiracy to control hooliganism,
but by then, the character has gone off the rails and chooses not to redeem
himself, but to embrace this underworld in the name of a moral lesson for
the audience. This is just too convenient to be frightening and only keeps
the viewer further from the character than they need to be, with the result
that there is nothing left to root for.
The film is nonetheless well made and engaging enough to sustain attention.
It drops pace only towards the end and eventual boredom is merely the result
of the loss of dramatic tension which comes with the certainty of knowing
what's going to happen and why. Finally, i.d. is likely to earn worthy
applause for its social value and be damned to use on media studies courses
not as an exemplar of British or European cinema, but as a 'message movie'
bereft of an aesthetic context and lurking hopefully on the fringe of something
deeper.
Review by Harvey O'Brien copyright
1997.