"Either you get me or you don't."
So said Danny Dyer in his interview with Patrick Kielty on last Friday's Late Late Show, a self-summation as accurate as it is brief.
If you loved Dyer having it large(r) in 2004's The Football Factory, then Marching Powder will be right up your before-and-after-the-game backstreet. Fans of Dyer's work in Rivals and EastEnders may need to tread more carefully, however, as his latest could be quite the shock to the system. As for the man himself asserting that Marching Powder is a rom-com, ah here - best leave that to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
Reuniting Dyer and old mucker writer-director Nick Love (Outlaw, The Business, The Football Factory, Goodbye Charlie Bright), Marching Powder follows the trials and tribulations of Jack, a cocaine-addicted football hooligan who's tasked with turning his life around in six weeks.
Facing jail after matchday drugs and violence, and with his long-suffering wife Dani (Stephanie Leonidas) ready for the off, Jack needs to get off the hamster wheel of hypermasculinity. The question is: does he really want to?
"It's all fun and games until one day you wake up and realise you've done nothing with your life," says Jack early on in Marching Powder, and, indeed, there's a poignancy behind the outré shenanigans here. Apart from the f-bomb ordnance, Marching Powder has another thing in common with the Oscar-winning Anora: it's also about someone struggling to see their own potential. Two characters, actually.
Enter Dyer's co-star Stephanie Leonidas, excellent as Jack's better half Dani and a huge reason why you remain invested even when the film strays too close to Groundhog Day for its own good. The chemistry between the pair is there, and if Leonidas ever follows in Dyer's E20 footsteps, well, Walford will be a much better place. And their son JJ in the film? He's played by Dyer's real-life son Arty - thrilled, according to his father, to get a week off school to curse like a trooper. Everyone learns their trade somewhere, and the lad does a good job!
There are tender scenes here amid all the snorting and shape-throwing, but the feeling persists that not only is Dyer a better actor than some directors and members of the public are willing to admit, he's also a better actor than he gives himself credit for. Marching Power is watchable in its waywardness but no challenge for Dyer in terms of range.
The ending is too close to that of The Football Factory to be anything but a disappointment. Déjà vu all over again is like something Jack would say in a moment of candour, albeit less politely.
.svg)