The fifth movie in the successful Footsoldier franchise, which won’t come
as a surprise given its title, Rise Of The Footsoldier: Origins, takes us
back to the origins of the series characters.
Set in the 1980’s Tony Tucker (Terry Stone) has just left the army and
whilst out of a job he comes to the assistance of a young boy who’s being
assaulted in the street. After fending off the attacker it turns out that
the victim’s grandfather owns nightclubs in the local area. Offered a
favour in return Tony asks for a job and takes over the door of one of the
old boys clubs.
With Tony on the door the club starts raking in the money bringing him to
the attention of a rival club owner (Keith Allen) whose business isn’t
doing so well. Making him an offer he can’t refuse Tony takes over the
running of the new club, a club where one of the doormen happens to be
fellow hard man, Bernard O’Mahoney (Vinnie Jones).
At first everything is going great until Tony starts dabbling in selling
drugs and after a fall out with some local drug dealers everything starts
to go pear shaped..
It wouldn’t be a Footsoldier movie without rival gangs fighting and that’s
pretty much the way it goes after Tony falls out with a rival dealer.
It’s all pretty good, if somewhat violent fun, and the C word is splattered
about as if it’s the only swear word that the script writers know.
Never having seen any of the previous movies it’s hard to say how this
ranks against the other four but based on my enjoyment of Rise Of The
Footsoldier: Origins I might just dip my toes into the franchise.
