(Credit: The Guardian)
Dyer is fantastic here, genuinely great in this odious, snarling, chomping, foul-mouthed burn-out who's hitting the end of this rope. I'm elated to see him at this point in his career, subverting and aging with his audience of "lads and hard men" into something like this: Jimmy Banks is the kind of character I love follwing in that he's just an awful, empty and hollow human being doing his job really well, as the emptiness and the void slowly consume him, because without this job he's nothing. It's long overdue and between this and "Marhcing Powder" Dyer is proving adept at capturing that man trying to wriggle free of his own darkness, and when the movie swerves into darker elements of the story (for it is a swerve despite the set-up) he is not the problem: he aquits himself wonderfuly. It's a movie carried on the performance of Dyer, and he's fucking great here: good job there!
Plus he dances to "Football's Coming Home" shitfaced and off-the-wagon: which I read as a wonderfully dark send up of his earlier works. Context matters!
The script starts strong, it sets up the plates and juggles well for the first half, but its swerve into darkness in the second and here falters: it's all a tad too contrived and staged, aiming for a serious message and odyssey into the heart of darkness but coming across as a "message play" as a result, thus not quite earning its dark parts. I apprecite the swing, and the structure is solid and doesn't overstay its welcome or stretch, but maybe stick around for the performance of Dyer rather than the second half scripting.
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