Cass (Jon S. Baird, 2008)

Did we need another film about the halcyon days of English football hooliganism? Probably not; everything to be said about the need for thick working-class lads to bond and develop a sense of identity by stoving in the heads of thick lads from other towns has already been well covered by the likes of The Football Factory, I.D., The Firm and Green Street, with varying degrees of success. The protagonists go around banging about pride while their families and partners wail and demand they change their ways.
Cass does do better on some counts than the average footy thug flick: it's at least based on a true story, which it avoids embellishing, and because its eponymous star is, rather unusually for the time and role, a black man raised by a white family, the film manages to have something to say about racism and the effects of unrootedness on the psyche. A pity then, that amongst some decent casting, it seems to have been obligatory to include the likes of Tamer Hassan and Leo Gregory to make damn sure that we know we're in the land of the diamond geezer.

5/10