On limited release from August 1st in the U.K….

Together with The Football Factory and Hooligans (Green Street), Cass completes a hat trick of recent films about English football hooliganism. Unlike the first two, however, Cass is based on a true story.

As leader of West Ham United’s Inter City Firm (ICF), Cass Pennant was the first person in the UK to be given a long-term prison sentence for football-related violence. On his release, he wrote an autobiography – also titled Cass – detailing how growing up in London in the late 60s and early 70s as a Jamaican orphan adopted by an elderly white British couple, he faced racist bullying on a daily basis.

After joining in a fight between West Ham and Wolverhampton Wanderers hooligans, he found acceptance with the West Ham fanatics. “He ain’t a Nig Nog, he’s West Ham!”, as Pennant’s predecessor puts it eloquently while head-butting a racist member of the gang not privy to Pennant’s newfound status. Years later, the ICF has disbanded and ex-con Pennant has found a job managing a team of bouncers, but his fame means he’s still a target for old rivals and he is shot by an Arsenal supporter. Pennant survives, but must decide whether to seek revenge or walk away from his life of violence once and for all.

The problem with Cass is that – while it’s great that Pennant went on to become the bestselling black author in Britain and open a publishing company – the redemption part of the story just isn’t as interesting as the hooliganism part. Nonso Anonzie puts in a solid performance as Pennant, but Linda Bassett and Peter White’s tackling of Pennant’s adoptive parents is shocking, and the movie’s only star player, Paul Kaye – all be him a Championship rather than a Premier League one – spends most of the movie on the substitutes’ bench.

In this way, Cass is best viewed as a film with historical interest. Pennant’s unique reason for turning to hooliganism means he’s ideally placed to comment on the motives of other hooligans – mass unemployment, disillusion with the unrealised promises of the 60s, etc. – and director Jon S. Baird inter-cuts the action judiciously with archive footage of violence and clips of Margaret Thatcher’s press conferences addressing “the English disease”.

However, three movies about hooliganism is enough now. Right? Lads?