It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Absolutely amazing

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I've seen some rubbish in my time but this just about plumbs the depths - to be honest it started to veer into so-bad-it's-good territory and me and my friends were having a good little chuckle by the end. Where do you start when it comes to pointing out the weak-points - the wimpy teenagers beating up proper thirty-something geezers, the completely mismatched music (80s football hooligans ditching the jazz-funk or later acid house and listening to Joy Division!), the camp bloke who wouldn't have lasted a second, the accents (which even I a non-Scouser know are laughable)....it goes on and on...The fact that such rubbish even got made tells you more about the right-on nature of parts of the British media than anything else

I had prepared for a nice evening with football/hooliganism themed movies and "awaydays" was one of them. I was looking forward to it and during the beginning of the film I really liked what I saw but then I missed something. Carty doesn't really go anywhere or do anything in my opinion. In between the fights he spends time with Elvis, gets annoyed by him and leaves only to return a couple of days later. This pattern repeats throughout the film and you can see Elvis falling in love with Carty and eventually committing suicide coming from a mile away. Knowing how the film ends doesn't really add to the excitement and so it just drags on. Same for the part with his sister getting beaten up or raped and him avenging her. Also there barely is any character development. Carty is pretty simple for a main character and his sister goes through more change than him. Most guys in the Pack don't have even have any form of character to speak of. They're just there and occasionally punch and kick guys twice their age in the face.This may not be a very deep analysis but I just got bored by a film that I had been excited to see. The music although sometimes misused is very good and I also liked the overall style of the film. With a little more happening and a bit less predictability it might have been a very good movie. But it ended up as quite boring, especially if you expect to see a take on British hooligans in the 70s/80s from a young lad's perspective. I think I don't even have to mention the lack of realism (the murder of Godden and the fights always ending as if the Pack was fighting pre school kids).5/10

I've just ploughed my way through this mess of a film on DVD. It started off very promising, I liked the music and that it was set in the late 1970s. Also the fact that it was a hooligan film not set in London was very refreshing. However it quickly descended into tedious self indulgent drivel. It was one of those films where after an hour or so you felt that every scene might be the last and the place where it ended didn't make any more sense than it ending anywhere else. The fight scenes were pure fantasy. A bunch of wimpy young lads seemed to be able to go anywhere and turn over gangs of hardened grown men. The violence was also presented as deep and profound as if it was it was the perfect back drop to the tortured sound of bands like Joy Division. When one of The Pack murders the gang leader by cutting in his throat in a crowded pub with no apparent repercussions legal or otherwise I realised this was a a fantasy film. A middle class art students take on what it is to be violent. By the end I was barely aware of what was going on I was so bored. I give it a 3 rather than a 1 for the music, the fashion and the haircuts.

Having read Kevin Sampson's thoughtful novel the screen version is something of a disappointment. Characterisation and motivation are largely over-looked in favour of scenes of adrenaline-charged violence. The clothing and style of the era are meticulously created for "The pack" (the hooligan group that Carty joins) but you have to question why the people they fight are generally older less fashionably dressed groups. The pack also emerge from every fight with barely an injury. The music itself is good but often misused - is Joy Division's delicately mournful "The Eternal" really an appropriate soundtrack to a group of bovver boys snarling their way down the street? Shane Meadows "This is England" offers a far superior vision of the period.