Marching Powder has lost a step or two.
Danny Dyer staggering through a powdery midlife crisis like Mick Carter caught in a Scarface cosplay might sound like a parody sketch – but Marching Powder plays it straight (despite its bawdy trailer), or at least as straight as a film can while snorting its way through six weeks of court-mandated chaos. It’s Nick Love’s big screen comeback, and like the protagonist, it hasn’t changed its trousers or attitude since 2004.
This is Love’s first feature film since The Sweeney back in 2012, a flashy but hollow attempt to drag the gritty lads-with-guns aesthetic into something resembling a mainstream action thriller. That misfire sent him off to television for a while – co-creating Bulletproof – but he’s clearly been biding his time, waiting for the right moment to dust off the old pub stool and return to the cinematic scrapheap he used to call home. With Marching Powder, he doesn’t just revisit his old territory, he deliberately picks the scabs of those bloodied knuckles to reopen old wounds that never properly healed and likely never will.
There’s something grimly watchable about Jack Jones, a once-notorious hooligan who’s now too old to run from the police and too coked up to care. Dyer leans in hard, delivering a performance that’s less a reinvention and more a gleeful wallow. Jack isn’t chasing redemption – he’s sprinting headfirst into obliteration with the self-awareness of a man who still thinks Stone Island is edgy and thinks therapy is a type of lager.
The film gives him a ticking clock: clean up or go to jail. It’s a deadline Jack approaches with all the determination of a man who once misjudged a barstool and hasn’t stood up since. Love directs with his usual bravado, lobbing in bloody noses, nightclub neon, and the kind of unfiltered, deeply unbothered attitude that feels almost quaint in its refusal to evolve. It’s like The Football Factory never left the pub and is clinging to the bar like grim death even while the world around it has long since called last orders.
Stephanie Leonidas does all the heavy lifting when it comes to dignity, playing Jack’s wife Dani with a brittle patience that somehow hasn’t shattered. She injects a flicker of reality into Jack’s cartoon inferno, not so much a grounding influence as the only human being onscreen who looks like she’d know how to fill in a jobseeker’s form.
What makes Marching Powder perversely compelling is how unashamed it is. There’s no prestige polish here, no faux-grit Instagram filters. Just sweat, speed, and someone shouting in a pub toilet about honour. Its humour is as crude as its characters and sometimes lands with all the grace of a headbutt – but in moments, it captures something uncomfortably honest about addiction, nostalgia, and the belligerent refusal to grow up. It won’t be for everyone. In fact, it’s almost certainly for no one under 35 who hasn’t owned a Gola tracksuit or threatened to “do someone in” over a kebab. But for those familiar with Love and Dyer’s previous work, it’s not just a reunion – it’s a throwback to a specific, sweat-stained strand of British filmmaking that’s been all but forgotten. Love’s return doesn’t mark a new chapter. It’s the same pub, the same pint, and the same barely concealed rage. And somehow, that’s exactly what makes it feel like a minor miracle: the kind of film that knows exactly who it is, even if its main character absolutely doesn’t.
