Marching Powder
TRUE BRIT
In the year of 2025, where culture and social wars in terminology, pronouns, masculinity, and toxic grooming are in every single fibre of the social consciousness, it’s hard to see where Danny Dyer and hoodlum hooliganism mentality have a place in not only the cinematic landscape but such testing times in society. Marching Powder answers that question with quite intriguing results that give an idea of where it belongs as well as the direction of its future.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Marching Powder is not for everyone, and instead of ignoring and avoiding all the above-mentioned hurdles and carrying on as usual, quite surprisingly, Marching Powder touches and hits these obstacles head-on in both its narrative and sentiment. Marching Powder, in essence, is about reform (not the political party, thankfully) and evolving with the times. Discussions, arcs and even retribution for being horrible or broken people and attempting to break the cycle of perversion, excess, and discrimination feel plenty involved with this running time. Granted, that's not to mean that Marching Powder succeeds on honing in a new era of critical thinking or self-aware attitudes toward the patriarchy, as beforelong it comes abundantly clear that the very reform this beast entails is often used as a comedic punchline with the use of C*nt often peppered in with severe tendency to drive home its point. If vulnerability is ever shown on screen, for example, it’s often bookended with the four-letter c-word for laughs and giggles while often forgetting to unravel the reason for a character’s arc and trauma, if at all.
Very much like Rise of the Footsoldier Vengeance, Marching Powder has a tough job to evolve the sub-genre, all the while never ostracising or implicating the very dedicated audience and fanbase that watch these types of films in droves. For the most part, Marching Powder succeeds on that front by antagonising the individual of its main character rather than the larger mentality at hand. Succeeding in not upsetting its target audience but making just enough headroom to convince others it’s a tamed beast, ironically not so different from what the central narrative of what Marching Powder is all about, in Dyer’s Jack convincing his family and friends he’s a reformed character. Supposedly saving one seems to save the lot type of mentality, or the “you are the change you see in the world” all the while directly making fun and light of such moral appendices. Furthermore, the comedy and approach to the humour are quite tiresome after the first act. It’s either making fun of its down-and-out main character through his addiction and inhibition, or the social climate in which this film quite insistently targets for comedic endeavour. Marching Powder chooses one or the other and then both. It has very little to say, only to revert to type with typical violent hooliganism thrown in for good measure.
Both elements aren't nearly enough to substantiate entertainment value, and while the nature of farce is all well and good for the first fifteen minutes (this is where Dyer does indeed excel), watching a character spiral with insincere and out-of-touch comedy that goes from Transgender, pronouns and mental illness, all with an uncomfortable and thinly layered echoe of sincerity. The question that remains is whether this is a project that is really evolving with the times or blatantly masquerading as one big gag? Time will only tell if the sincerity is genuine or strides have truly been made.
