Film reviews: Danny Dyer dials in his greatest ‘phoney' performance
Former EastEnders’ star Danny Dyer embraces his toughest challenge yet – an 89-minute one-man film that shot in just ten days.
Films by Graham Young
ONE LAST DEAL (18, 89 mins) ***
In a film bookended with brilliant shots of London’s skyline, Danny Dyer was the natural Cockney choice to play Jimmy Banks, a potty-mouthed football agent bidding to land a lucrative deal for one of the Premier League’s top goalscorers.
Both of their futures – and lives – will be on the end of the line in the course of a single day of heated conversations.
During an increasingly fractious series of calls in his picture-framed office, Dyer tries to elevate his 18-rated invective to an art-form, even swearing when talking to his daughter about her mother. Nurse!
Directed by Brendan Muldowney from a script by Peter Howlett, everyone involved has clearly been inspired by a pair of Peaky Blinders’ stars.
Think of Stephen Graham’s one-take restaurant movie Boiling Point (2021) and Tom Hardy’s in-car performance in Locke (2014), a one-man movie written and directed by Steven Knight.
That gripping story of a construction worker talking on the phone while driving to London has even been remade recently as a French film called La choix (2024).
Whether One Last Deal becomes a hit or is ever remade depends on Dyer’s army of fans rocking up at either Odeon Broadway Plaza and Vue Star City.
As the now Bafta-winning Mr Bigstuff star himself proudly says, anyone who doesn’t like him should run a mile.
But, if you love football excesses, don’t mind the constant hassle of buzzing phones and readily buy into Dyer’s aggressive silver screen persona, the rolling drums’ score will keep you on board with Dyer’s pitch – even when his language turns into an overly-fruity cakehole mix.
Now aged 48 and the father-in-law of West Ham and England star Jarrod Bowen, Dyer made his name in The Football Factory (2004) so you could say here that the Rivals’ star is ‘coming home’ in the words of the inevitably-featured Three Lions’ song.
By trying to broad his ambitions without truly diversifying, can Dyer be classed as the next Ray Winstone? Not when a one-man football film fails to last 90 minutes!
HOW TO MAKE A KILLING (15, 105 mins) **
After starring in Top Gun 2 (2022) as ‘Hangman’, Glenn Powell looked for all the world as if he had the chops to give Tom Cruise a run for his money.
Anyone But You (2023) was a reasonably successful romantic drama with Sydney Sweeney, but Hit Man (2023), Twisters (2024), The Running Man (2025) and now How To Make A Killing (2026) all suggest that Tom’s action man status is safe for a bit longer yet.
As the ludicrously named Becket Redfellow, Powell’s character has a $28 billion inheritance to land, but seven relatives to eliminate first.
From the moment the film begins, the entire enterprise seems to be getting off on the wrong foot.
Like Scream 7, the fun is designed around how and when people will be bumped off but there’s no societal depth, no momentum. Co-stars including Margaret Qualley and Ed Harris are equally poorly served.
It feels less of a crowd-pleasing thriller and more like an ill-fated attempt by little-known writer and director John Patton Ford to create a Michelin-starred meal simply by microwaving a Pot Noodle version of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), a classic Ealing Studios black comedy produced by Birmingham’s own Michael Balcon and particularly memorable for giving Alec Guinness eight roles. Here, a bland Powell is consumed by the one.
REMINDERS OF HIM (12A, 114 mins) ***
In just two years, novelist Colleen Hoover has scored scored a quick-fire, silver screen hat-trick – but not one to be celebrated too joyously.
It Ends With Us (2024) will one day only be remembered for this May’s forthcoming real-life actor vs. director alleged sexual harassment court case (Lively vs. Baldoni). How the arguments and fashion choices etc are reported might make the case far more entertaining than the film.
In the meantime, last year’s second adaption of Hoover’s works, Regretting You (2025), more than lived up to its unpromising title.
And so to Reminders of Him (2026), the story of a woman released from a seven-year prison sentence and trying to make renewed contact with the five-year-old daughter she hasn’t met since handcuffed birth.
Directed by Vanessa Caswill (Love At First Sight, 2023) and a perfectly-timed weepie of sorts for Mother’s Day weekend, the film is easily Hoover’s best to date thanks mostly to the charm of its two leads.
Maika Monroe (Longlegs, 2024) plays aching mum Kenna and Tyriq Withers (Him, 2025) is ex-footballer Ledger, a caring neighbour of young Diem being brought up by her bereft grandparents.
Set in a small, rural place called Paradise (i.e. not the Birmingham one), there is some fabulous (Canadian) scenery to go with the heartfelt core of the story about finding second chances.
Just the kind of Nicholas Sparks-type film that Channing Tatum might have made with Rachel McAdams 20 years ago, Reminders of Him is sufficiently touching to serve as a comfort blanket for anyone recently bereaved and in need of finding tears.
Reviewing films in Birmingham since 1989, Graham Young is a former UK Regional Film Journalist of the Year and three-time runner-up.
PICTURE CREDITS
One Last Deal / Vertigo Releasing
How to Make a Killing / STUDIOCANAL
Reminders of Him / Universal