Marching Powder

“One for the lads”, but also “one fuelled mostly by spite”. Danny Dyer plays a coke addicted football hooligan who’s been given 6 weeks to sort his life out else face prison. He tries to rekindle the romance with his wife and build a relationship with his kid.

I really want to think that Nick Love, film school graduate, is trying to portray the destructive habits of a deeply flawed man. But at every turn he just reverts to cheap jokes and pulls away from actual emotional stakes or consequences (that would make you a facking bacon). It’s one thing that Danny Dyer’s character shies away from his feelings but it’s another thing when the whole film does.

For instance at one point Danny’s kid gets shot at by a drug dealer (the phrase he’s got a facking shooter actually gets said), and while the kid has a breakdown afterwards Danny tells him to pull himself together. It’s telling that Love chooses to leave it there and have the kid go back to being fine, rather than explore what having a near death experience thanks to your shithead dad might feel like.

So what Marching Powder ends up being is a 2008 cockney lads comedy about cocaine and saying cunt a lot, and how that is more important and funny than anything else in the world. Even for fans of the genre this must be quite a tired concept.