Danny Dyer's new comedy Marching Powder channels '00s nostalgia – but does it deliver? (2025)

Marching Powder marks Danny Dyer's first movie in a decade, so it feels fitting that his return to the big screen also marked a reunion with British filmmaker Nick Love.

The new comedy is their fifth collaboration and is, in many ways, a spiritual sequel to 2004's The Football Factory. That movie saw Dyer playing a member of a violent Chelsea hooligan firm (much to Dyer's dismay), and it was one of a number of '00s British movies based on football hooliganism.

Marching Powder is a throwback to that era of British cinema, full of brutal bursts of violence, liberal use of the C-word and other offensive – sometimes outdated – language. But it also might surprise you that there's something more interesting going on, something that acknowledges it's been more than 20 years since The Football Factory.

Jack Jones (Dyer) might seem like a typical hooligan at first glance, but Marching Powder isn't about to let him off lightly. In a narration that frequently breaks the fourth wall, Jack notes that he's "done nothing with his life", and we're also told he's losing his hair and has erectile dysfunction.

A violent matchday riot sees Jack arrested and given six weeks to turn his life around, otherwise he'll find himself in jail. Rather than following his exploits around the country from riot to riot, the movie is about Jack's attempts to turn his life around, avoid prison and keep his marriage with Dani (Stephanie Leonidas) alive.

It turns Marching Powder into a unique, and often crude, spin on the rom-com. Dani loves Jack, but equally is happy to call him a "c**t" regularly and knows they've been together too long for Jack to truly change his ways. It's a refreshing approach that gifts the movie its funniest one-liners.

Danny Dyer and Stephanie Leonidas are terrific, sharing a believable lived-in chemistry that also makes the movie more affecting than you'd expect. It all culminates in a hilarious spin on Love Actually's infamous cue card scene, and whenever the focus is on them or Jack's attempts to go clean, the movie is at its strongest.

The problem is that Marching Powder is a movie of two halves. Jack also has to deal with Dani's half-brother Kenny who's just got out of the "health farm", a group of friends who constantly offer him alcohol and drugs, and rival football gangs with a score to settle.

This side of the movie attempts to update the hooligan genre to focus on Jack's belief that he's a "stain on society", irrelevant in a modern world that's moved on and diversified without him. It's hit and miss, as Nick Love's script both wants to call out Jack for his sometimes-regressive ways, but also get a cheap laugh from them.

Anything involving the football hooliganism and rival firms could have been deleted scenes from The Football Factory. It's never glamourised, but it still feels outdated and an uneasy blend with the more effective aspects of the script that address Jack's inability to change his ways.

When it's a choice between either more scenes of a depressed, topless Jack eating Wotsits from a bowl, ruminating on how it's "normal life that breaks you", or a seen-it-before mass brawl with one-note characters, we know what we'd choose. But Marching Powder unfortunately tries to do both.

Fans of Nick Love and Danny Dyer, though, will likely just be glad to see them back together in a new movie. Like his lead star, it's also been a decade since we've seen a new movie from Love, and it's clear that it's personal to him and showcases a mature approach while trying to recapture the energy of his '00s work.

Marching Powder might not be entirely successful in blending nostalgia with modern-day themes, yet there's still plenty to enjoy from Dyer's long-awaited return to the big screen.

Marching Powder is released in UK and Irish cinemas on March 7.