GREEN STREET

GB / US
2005
1hr 49mins
Dir: Lexi Alexander
Starring: Elijah Wood and Leo Gregory

A wrongly expelled Harvard graduate joins the West Ham United soccer firm

There are plenty of railway scenes in this football film, centred on drugs and hooliganism, but the continuity leaves as much to be desired as the dodgy story lines. The opening scenes at ‘Bank’ station on the Underground were in fact shot at East Finchley (though, curiously, a street level exit for Bank is also seen in this sequence) and there are some glimpses of 1995-built Northern Line tube stock, and some scenes filmed onboard. There is also a shot of Elijah Wood arriving at London Paddington and a Class 332 ‘Heathrow Express’ EMU is in the background. On the way to a match in Manchester, some of the gang meet in the car park next to London King’s Cross station and there are Class 91s, HST’s, a WAGN purple-liveried Class 317 EMU, a Class 365 EMU and a Class 67 diesel all visible in the background, but then it all goes a bit wrong. The gang are then back at Paddington for their ‘Manchester’ train and there are brief glimpses of HST’s, a Class 180 DMU and another Class 332 Hex EMU. On the way up north, the gang are onboard an HST on the Great Western main line and in one shot, a pair of Class 166 ‘Turbo’ DMUs in Thames Trains livery pass by the windows of the train. There is a very distant view of a train passing through the English countryside, which looks like it may be a pair of Silverlink-liveried Class 321 EMUs, and when the hooligans pull the communication cord and alight at ‘Macclesfield’, it is in fact Westbury! Look carefully and you can just make out a Hanson-liveried JHA aggregates hopper wagon behind the entrance building. Even worse, is that the fight which follows is set outside ‘Manchester’ station (no one particular station is specified), though in reality it is the rarely viewed entrance to Fenchurch Street. This is a pleasant surprise, but it hardly makes up for the extremely poor mish-mash of seemingly random shots.

This is East Finchley, which is outside. It is playing the part of ‘Bank’, which is a deep level tube station.
Notice in this shot the blanked out station sign behind.
I wouldn’t normally include such a shot but this is one of the exits to street level from the real Bank station.
Platforms 6 and 7 at London Paddington and Elijah Wood has just disembarked from the Heathrow Express train on the left
The concourse at Padd, looking clean and tidy and not particularly busy
King’s Cross puts in an appearance, with GNER-liveried Mk.4 sets and an HST present
To the right of Elijah Wood is a Class 317 EMU in WAGN purple livery
And to the right of Ralf Spall is a nice surprise in the form of an EWS Class 67 on ‘Thunderbird’ duties
Back at London Paddington for a trip to ‘Manchester’ and we have from right to left: two First Group HST’s in platforms 1 and 3, a First Group Class 180 ‘Adelante’ DMU in platform 4, another HST on 5 and a Heathrow Express Class 332 EMU in on number 7.
Onboard an HST (or late Mk.2 air-cons??) and a pair of Class 166 DMU’s are about to overtake through the window.
Perhaps the oddest shot of all is this. What looks to be a pair of Class 321 EMU’s is passing through the countryside in the centre of this shot, taken somewhere on the southern end of the West Coast main line.
Ross McCall outside ‘Manchester’ station with United’s ‘Red Army’ causing some bother behind. This is in fact a rare glimpse of the delightful and almost forgotten main station entrance to London Fenchurch Street, the only London termini not to be served directly from the Underground.
The last in the concoction of railway scenes cobbled together is this shot of the frontage to Westbury station in Wiltshire, playing the part of Macclesfield in Cheshire! Note the blue and grey Hanson aggregates wagon behind the entrance building top right.