Awaydays

On the Wirral in the grim early years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, the opportunities for thrill-seeking young men looking to escape 9 to 5 drudgery are what they’ve always been: sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, fashion, football and fighting. Paul Carty (Nicky Bell) goes to the game, chases skirt, pores over records in the racks at Probe, and gets to see Echo and the Bunnymen, but his fraught family life and dull job leave him feeling bereft. Becoming mates with the Berlin Bowie romantic Elvis (Liam Boyle), Carty is drawn to The Pack, a faction of football hooligans who own the terraces, a gang that Elvis is finding hard to distance himself from.

Endearing himself to The Pack’s General, John Godden (Stephen Graham), Carty throws himself into a world of boozy train journeys, Stanley knives and savage violence. Skillfully directed by Pat Holden, with a script adapted by Kevin Sampson from his own cult novel, Awaydays is an exuberant thrill, an outstanding rites of passage movie with intelligence and depth that is superior to any recent film dealing with hooliganism. The violence is brutal and horribly realistic; period details are impeccably recreated; and the strident, post-punk soundtrack that propels the action is superb.
Michael Hayden

The screening on Mon 20 Oct will have subtitles and audio-description.