Marching Powder - Review

Off the heels of Rivals, Danny Dyer stars in Marching Powder, a film about drug addiction and football hooliganism, amongst other things. Dyer plays Jack Jones, a Stone Island-wearing cocaine addict who travels home and away with his lower league football team to start fights with the opposing club’s firm. To show how much they actually care about the game, there is not a single shot of a match or a stadium, it is just about the warfare, launching bottles and swinging arms.

Along with his hooliganistic tendencies, Jack sees cocaine with a stardust sheen. It is an addiction he must have had from a young age - he informs the audience that ‘cocaine’ was the first word out of his mouth. In a fun little animated skit during the film’s opening, we learn he met his wife, Dani (Stephanie Leonidas) at university, she was studying art, but is now a housewife, with the couple surviving mostly off her father’s apparent wealth. Jack is forced to get his act together after being arrested during a brawl in Grimsby. He’s given 6 weeks to turn his life around and is legally required to attend couples therapy, but can he keep off the marching powder.

Marching Powder is the sort of film that is desperate to get an 18 certificate, on some of the earlier posters it even says ‘18 TBC’. In some ways, its profanity and violence are its universal selling point. It is full of all the swear words you can think of, and it isn’t afraid to say the words that would get you cancelled. Yet, in the context of the film, it doesn’t feel overly harmful or aggressive but in service of representing a poorly educated culture that feels the need to throw verbal insults at one another like the best rally of a Wimbledon final.

Dyer shines in a role where he is playing an evolution of the hard man he has come to be typecast as. Jack is a man who is addicted to drugs and violence, but also the social aspect. Part of the reason he struggles so much is the social pressure put on him to conform to the football hooliganism lifestyle. You don’t for one minute think that he is malicious in any way, but just trying not to fizzle out. Indeed the rom-com aspects of the marketing are not misleading, this is a man trying to get his marriage back on track and desperate to do the right thing but failing at every turn.

Although it will definitely be too vulgar for some people, Marching Powder is a charming, heartfelt and genuine film. Its comedy is crude but funny, with a central character who is frustrating but likeable, making it a surprisingly well-put-together film with a strong portrayal of addiction.