Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Set in ’70s Liverpool, Pat Holden’s film tells of a bored teenager (Nicky Bell) who, having befriended the charismatic Elvis (Liam Boyle) at an Echo & The Bunnymen gig, falls in with his pack of football ‘casuals’.

Cue much Stanley knife-related mayhem, homoerotic tension and some Trainspotting-style heroin taking to the strains of such post-punk icons as Magazine, The Cure and Joy Division.

Alas, being based on Kevin Sampson’s 10-year-old cult novel doesn’t stop this being a pale facsimile of Shane Meadows’ masterly This Is England, a likeness that’s only heightened by the presence of Stephen Graham as gang leader John.

To its credit, Awaydays does not glamorise its hooligans the way The Football Factory and Green Street did. Even so, given its fascination with their Adidas trainers, green cagoules, drainpipe jeans and wedge haircuts, it does come perilously close to fetishising them.

Neil Smith

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.