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Awaydays (DVD)
Year: 2009
Rating: MA
Director: Pat Holden
Cast: Liam Boyle , Nicky Bell, Stephen Graham
Release Date: January 13, 2012
Distributor: Icon
The Film: 2.0
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5"...mediocre disappointment."
Made largely with a cast of unknowns (with the exception of Rebecca Atkinson from Shameless and Stephen Graham from Snatch) and based on a novel by screenwriter Kevin Sampson, Awaydays is set during the early 1980s era of English football hooliganism. Carty (Nicky Bell) is a bored middle-class young man with a job that pays the bills but offers no advancement. The film opens with him paying lip-service at his mother's grave and then taking off to join his mates, known as ‘The Pack', in their weekend bust-ups with rival football supporters. His guide to this underworld of street violence is Elvis (Liam Boyle), who is jealous of Carty's ability to float between working and middle class society. Carty after all has the option to be a weekend gangbanger, or a petit bourgeois office worker. This is the problem with Kevin Sampson's premise, that the protagonist is not forced into street violence - he just enjoys the excitement of inflicting pain. Plus every female character in Awaydays is a sexual object. Furthermore the assault of one character is used just to provide Carty with the excuse for more violence. Even the occasional Joy Division track does not enliven this mediocre disappointment.
