Rise Of The Foot Soldier stars Ricci Harnett.Craig Fairbrass and Billy Murray from (Eastenders),Neil Maskell and Roland Manookian(Football Factory) and Terry Stone.Written and directed by Julian Gilbey who was a winner of the Jury Prize in the best uk feature for Rollin With The Nines.

‘it was the end of an era,but before the murders,the toture,the beatings and the ecstacy,before all that,there was football.Football was where the spite and the hatred came from,on those terraces,well,its where it all began for me’With narration coming from Ricci Harnett(Leach),we see his life at a young age,with marriage and football hooliganism.To later working as a bouncer and the supervising of drug deals.Then later becoming a bouncer for a nightclub seeing the early stages of the rave scene.then working his way to the very top.Being involved with one of the most renowned gangs to have terrorised the cities of London and Essex,making him the most well known criminal face of the late 80s -90s.

This film contains some of the best british actors around,who given a powerful and life like script,are able to give meemerising performances.I had never heard of Carlton Leach until after first hearing about this film and the performance given by Harnett absolutely stunned me and showed me how much of an amazing human being Leach is.With the set obviously being London,this was destined to be another british masterpiece.

Director and writer Julian Gilbey manages to throw you into the world of Leach.By giving you the ferocious fighting and torture scenes,this really shows the true potrayal of life back then with the sort of people involved in any way with Leach.The use of photograpghy was another great added effect,sometimes blurring the picture and jerking the camera especially during the fight scenes,almost trying at some points to keep up with it all.

I would haveto say in my overall opinion’wow’and that if you enjoyed similiar previous movies such as Essex Boys,Football Factory and Green Street,then forget all those and go see this film,it rises above them all,with real hardcore british talent being given direction and scripts of the highest order,this will have you talking for days afterwards.

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