Marching Powder

Having Danny Dyer team back up with The Football Factory Director Nick Love for another film largely focused on football hooliganism wasn’t necessarily on the 2025 bingo card.

Marching Powder may feel a little out of time and place in part but, by using that as the key throughline of the film, it’s an enjoyable update that broadly works.

Dyer plays Jack, still indulging in his old ways despite his advancing years. He’s not the same character as in the previous film but easily could be and, once arrested for fighting and given six weeks to turn his life around, faces the reality of what giving up ‘the life’ will mean.

The film works well when steering the themes towards apathy, disillusionment, feeling out of touch, societal change and generational differences.

Dyer injects Jack with his usual charm and charisma and, despite his mainly horrible decisions, his voiceover quips and fourth wall breaks often raise a smile with his trademark language and jokes.

The film loses its way somewhat in the more bizarre choices. A touch of absurdism often seeps through which, while occasionally heightening the points it's trying to make, often has the opposite effect of distancing you from things a little too much.

For every relatable line there’s an opposite follow up and, whilst we’re not here for moral lessons, it can feel a little on the line at points.

It's fun, it's sweary and it has a few good jokes but something just 'feels' missing.

Clearly, it’s striving for the generation defining feel of the earlier film or something like Trainspotting but it falls short of these lofty benchmarks.

Perhaps that’s partly because, in the modern era, it’s much harder to stand out in the same way but, largely, Marching Powder plumps for anarchic rebellion but, like its lead character, feels slightly out of place.

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