Marching Powder (18)

Middle-aged football hooligan Jack feels increasingly irrelevant in a society that prefers to trade blows over social media than in person. Partial to drugs and the adrenaline rush of violent match day exploits, Jack is arrested after one altercation and given six weeks to reform or he will be sentenced to a long stretch behind bars. He pledges to resist the gravitational pull of his fellow football fans and devote himself to his family but exceedingly bad habits are hard to break.

LondonNet Film Review

Marching Powder (18) Film Review from LondonNet

Danny Dyer is ever so naughty but somewhat nice as he reunites with Nick Love, director of The Football Factory and The Business, for a bruising comedy drama about a passionate fan of the beautiful game who pledges to turn his life around for the sake of his family. This year’s big Oscar winner, Anora, proved rapid-fire swearing can be deftly woven into a script and feel meaningful and authentic (Sean Baker’s picture drops more than 400 f-bombs in 139 minutes). Love’s script works to a similar expletives-per-minute quota, unleashing a blitzkrieg of c-bombs as commas and full stops to saucy repartee between characters as they poke fun at each other, vent frustrations or, in Dyer’s case, repeatedly break the fourth wall to candidly share inner thoughts directly to camera…

Those of a nervous disposition about crude language, political incorrectness and excessive on-screen drug use should avoid taking a hit of Marching Powder because it’s full-on from the testosterone-soaked opening frames that bring bloodshed and snarling barbarity to the mean streets of… Lincolnshire. Dyer continues to polish his cheeky chappy persona and catalyses pleasantly simmering chemistry with screen wife Stephanie Leonidas. His real-life 11-year-old son, Arty, is cast as his character’s only child and delivers some of the film’s most challenging dialogue.

Jack Jones (Danny Dyer) is a 45-year-old football hooligan who belongs to a hardcore firm alongside his three best mates (Bailey Patrick, Dean Harrison, Joe Jackson). On match days, Jack abandons his long-suffering wife Dani (Leonidas) and young son JJ (Arty Dyer) to join other committed troublemakers, high on cocaine, adrenaline and each other’s cheeky banter, for fisticuffs with rival squads.

Dani’s menacing father (Geoff Bell) has never thought Jack is good enough and he is waiting for his son-in-law to prove him right. He might get his wish when police arrest Jack during an away game in Grimsby and the judge threatens to impose a custodial sentence unless Jack can show evidence of rehabilitation over the next six weeks. To resist the gravitational pull of his gang, Jack agrees to act as caretaker to his 25-year-old brother-in-law, Kenny Boy (Calum MacNab), who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital. Unfortunately, exceedingly bad habits are hard to break.

Marching Powder gleefully stomps through similar territory to Love’s previous films, forcibly inserting rom-com tropes into a chaotic world of football tribalism gone haywire. Fight sequences are confidently staged, including wince-inducing kicks and punches to unprotected heads. Dyer’s natural charm endears his self-destructive and directionless rapscallion, who feels increasingly irrelevant in a society that prefers to trade blows over social media than in person. Leonidas’s strong support urges us to care about Jack and Dani in the hope they can stop scoring own goals in their fractured marriage.

– Kim Hu