East End Babylon (18) 105 mins ***
Oi! was punk’s extremist
wing, given more to skinheads than mohawks. Richard England’s knotty, tricky
doc strives to give the movement context through the story of the Cockney
Rejects’ Jeff and Micky Geggus, who exploded out of a cramped Canning Town semi
in the late 70s with a tape recorder full of “four-bar shitter songs”, and came
to provide the soundtrack for West Ham’s hooligan element. The Gegguses could,
one suspects, talk all day: even their lighter showbiz anecdotes – flattening
Steve Wright, terrorising Legs & Co – have a revealing edge, yet this band
of boneheads still drew the line at swastikas. “We bashed a few people, but
fuck ‘em,” is the unrepentant conclusion: its subjects’ defiant gobbiness – and
the participation of several variously nostalgic ex-hooligans – is problematic,
but the film amply describes the unfocused rage that can fester in deprived
communities.
East End Babylon opens in selected cinemas from Tuesday.
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