I was not a particular fan of the Green Street franchise. The original was a serious movie that I found plagued by silly character decisions (a mother brings an infant to a soccer brawl!) so I never saw the sequel, but I will always watch a Scott Adkins movie. When I heard he was doing a third Green Street movie, that seemed like a good fit.
Despite its social commentary origins, it seems Green Street has become a fight franchise. Danny (Adkins) returns home when his brother is killed in a soccer brawl. Now the soccer firms have organized underground so they can fight in a more structured way and avoid the authorities. It’s basically your standard underground fighting movie where Danny has to work his way up to fight the guys responsible for his brother’s death.
The fighting stays a bit more real, which makes sense. These are hooligans, not trained martial artists. While it would be fun to see Adkins unleash his flips on unsuspecting soccer firms, he stays on the ground for the most part. It’s still electric to see him fight, and we get a glimpse in the film’s prologue that Danny’s not just a brawler. Green Street 3 satisfies Adkins fans, giving him a chance to get rough and tumble, and do some more choreographed fights as the underground tournament builds.
Green Street 3 is also sort of an ‘80s training movie. Danny gets his old neighborhood boys back into shape, with training montages galore. Since this is a lower budget movie, the training music is a thinly veiled knockoff of Rocky, but that’s what you get in a straight to video sequel.
While certainly not the pinnacle of Adkins’ abilities, I could recommend Green Street 3 to any Scott Adkins fan. It gives us a healthy dose of energetic fights, with a slightly more dramatic milieu in the areas where it sticks to the source material. Definitely worth at least a rental.
Rating: Redbox