You can make good films about bad people, and certainly not every redemption story has to result in a sinner becoming a saint. But making a film about a bad person who doesn’t want redemption, who seems driven by grievance and who expresses his contempt for and sense of superiority to the audience – without any obvious justification for that feeling – is a tougher sell. Director Nick Love relies on star Danny Dyer’s considerable charm in an attempt to do so here, but even he can’t quite sell it.
Dyer's Jack is a strange figure. He married into money, so he has a nice house, beautiful wife and son – at a fee-paying school – and no obvious material concerns. He spends his time getting off his face and into fights at lower-league football matches – until a prison sentence forces him to re-think his approach. But Love can’t seem to decide whether he needs to change much or not; whether he’s a plucky underdog with “potential”, as his long-suffering wife Dani (Stephanie Leonidas) puts it, or a guy who’s already living the dream.
The film never really challenges Jack's disdain for everything around him.
It's hard to tell because every moment of self-reflection or real insight is followed by almost immediate disavowal, delivered through Jack’s frequent (but not consistent) monologues to camera, which are sometimes funny and often nakedly self-critical, culminating in a wannabe-Trainspotting manifesto for life. But while Jack is self-reflective, he doesn’t really want to change much, beyond perhaps trying to save his marriage, and the film never really challenges his disdain for everything around him. It’s as if it's aimed at an audience of Jacks who similarly reject self-examination entirely in favour of comforting fury at an unjust world.
Dyer is a talented and charismatic guy, and he really delivers what he’s given to work with, but the film is so busy indulging Jack’s misanthropy and grievances that there’s very little time to engage honestly with real emotion. Jack shows little empathy or curiosity for anyone beyond his family and friends – and little enough for them – so it’s a big ask to demand that an audience have much affection for him.