Marching Powder: Danny Dyer's lairy geezer comedy is tryhard nostalgia bait
The very moment it became respectable to like Danny Dyer again – after his calming stint on EastEnders, and genuinely endearing performance in Rivals – he's back to some of his vicious old tricks. Marching Powder, to stretch a comparison, is Danny Dyer's The Godfather, Part III. How? Because of a much-quoted Al Pacino line: just when we thought he was out, they've pulled him back in.
By 'they', we mean this film's writer-director, Nick Love, and by 'in', we mean into head-butting, coke-snorting and unprintable insults. Love is the man who put Dyer on the map 20-odd years ago, with a quartet of lairy Brit-flicks, ranging from the cheap and chirpy (2001's Goodbye Charlie Bright) to the equally cheap and grimly reactionary (2007's vigilante thriller Outlaw, which I remember with shudders). In between were The Football Factory (2004) and The Business (2005), which do have their fans.
For non-fans, no memory of the above is needed to get a handle on Marching Powder. There's also absolutely zero need to see it. It catches us up with a middle-aged football hooligan going to flab, calls him Jack, and casts guess who. In an opening spiel which sets the bar high for aggressive trash-talking, he aptly describes himself as a 'dickie-sniffing [c-word]' – rough translation, a boorish gentleman who nasally ingests a huge quantity of cocaine.
This habit has eroded his generally baffling marriage to long-suffering Dani (Stephanie Leonidas), while energising him and his tragic friends for bouts of slo-mo gang violence which regularly land them or their opponents in hospital, jail or both. One swaggering brawl plays out to a certain synth version of Beethoven's 9th, suggesting that Love's fanboy devotion to A Clockwork Orange might override having fully understood it. But who knows?
Jack makes some effort to reform his ways. He gets off the gak (one of many popular synonyms for cocaine) and tries to look after his wild child brother-in-law Kenny Boy (Calum McNab), who has just been released from a mental hospital, and likes to rob drug dealers at knife-point. Marching Powder is hilariously uncommitted, though, to the idea of actually turning a new leaf. There's always more aggro around the corner, and someone thrusting another small white packet into Jack's hand.
The film itself has a few semi-redeeming features; it's no Outlaw, thankfully. Much as it aims to shock by reviving taboo language and jokes about sitting on Gary Glitter's lap, it's more toothless than dangerous. Any niche appeal the experience has is summed up by the sight of a semi-naked Dyer slapping his beer gut and scarfing an entire bag of Wotsits, then realising one has lodged itself in his chest hair, and eating it.
In the circumstances, Stephanie Leonidas – once a teen heroine in Neil Gaiman's MirrorMask (2005) – does ferociously well in it, too. She may be fathoms out of Dyer's league, but almost gets you to buy into the premise that this toxic marriage is worth saving. Nudging this try-hard nostalgia bait out of one-star territory is a truly remarkable feat, but the credit is all hers.
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