I would opine that Alan Clarke was one of the best TV directors to come out of Britain, certainly at that time (his 1989 TV Short "Elephant" was brilliant). I'm not a fan England's Soccer Hooligan genre (Green Street Hooligans was atrociously bad and mind-numbingly boring with its unchecked mediocrity and cheapness), a plain, mediocre clump of common videos, but fortunately Clarke brings his sensible eye and sharply minimalist approach to make one of the better-directed outings in such a cheap genre (far, far better directed than the aforementioned Green Street, and mercifully much shorter)...but outside that genre, it's not much to speak of. Just a simple, plain, OK TV movie, on the upper tier of his filmography. Certainly solid as far as made-for-TV movies of that era go.
Review of The Firm
