Cass

Introduction

Cass Pennant is Britain's best selling black author but began his life adopted as a baby by an elderly white couple in East London before growing up to become one of the most feared and famous football hooligans in the country. The film begins with Cass gunned down in front of a nightclub before it flashes back to his upbringing, first as a 14 year old in 1972 involved in his first football related gang fight in Wolverhampton before moving further back to when he was a baby. The racism his mum experiences ("they're still cute at that age before they get the curly hair and big lips") follows Cass through his childhood, getting into a fight because of the colour of his skin and his real name of Carol. Finding that violence can shut up a mouthy bully, he changes his name to Cass after Cassius Clay and, as a childhood fan of West Ham Utd., he enters the world of 'The Casuals', using his physical size to good effect to lead the notorious Inter City Firm (ICF).

Jailed for a brawl in Newcastle, he experiences racism of a different kind inside, called a 'coconut' because of his white upbringing and ignorance of West Indian patois. Upon release he begins dating a white girl, Elaine, wanting to settle down and turn over a new leaf, but he can't escape his past.

Based on the book by Cass Pennant and Mike Ridley, this shows how football violence evolved and was largely crushed by Thatcher's government and how hard it is to walk away and start a new life.

Video

A disappointingly noisy picture with plenty of grain, especially in the medium and wide shots; this distracts slightly but almost gives the film a period look, helped by the excellent costumes, production design by Daniel Taylor (Life On Mars) and set decoration.

Director Jon S. Baird largely uses static cameras which works well and the fight scenes are very well choreographed and organised with Cass contacting men from his past to act as extras - this meant that some fights got a little out of hand with actors suffering broken bones, bruises and other injuries - which does add to the realism. Baird also incorporates plenty of archive footage of Thatcher, the miners' strike and football violence including the Heysel Stadium disaster.

*The pictures contained in this review are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect the image quality of the disc.*

Audio

This is a BD that didn't really need a high definition audio track but it comes with a DTS-HD Master Audio English soundtrack. The dialogue is crisp, the surrounds are only used sparingly, but very well and there's a great selection of music to fit the different periods. The score takes second place to the source music but is also very good.

Extra Features

The commentary with Jon S. Baird, producer Stefan Haller and Nonso Anozie is reasonably informative, the first two doing most of the speaking and slapping plenty of backs as they go.

The Behind The Scenes featurette is comprised of four parts, running at 29 minutes in total and they can be watched together or individually: The Cast; The Tear-ups; The Prison and The Firm. These are interesting and add to your understanding of how the film was made.

Cass Pennant in His Own Words - whilst they were filming, a camera was often on the real Cass, who was a consultant, and he free-wheels about all aspects of his life in this expletive-laden piece, which shows what a good job Nonso Anonzie did, capturing his essence and mannerisms.

It's a Casual Life is Baird's 2003 short film about football violence that got him involved in Green Street, which led to him meeting Cass Pennant and making Cass. It's a fine piece, which can be seen on YouTube.

There are also several TV spots and a trailer.

Conclusion

The 'English Disease' has been dealt with recently in films like The Football Factory and Green Street, which seemed to glorify gang violence. There is an element of this in Cass as he finds acceptance as a fighter in a gang, where they don't care about his skin colour.

The casting is excellent, with the massive Nonso Anozie extremely impressive in the lead, with an extremely faithful portrayal of Cass Pennant and the supporting cast are great, with Linda Bassett and Peter Wight as his adoptive parents and Natalie Press as his girlfriend.

Cass is an interesting take on race, hooliganism and its transformation during the 1970s and '80s. It's as much a documentary on Britain under Thatcher as it is a biopic of a violent offender made good. It's a strange film to put out on BD, but is well worth watching on any format.