One Last Deal review: a magnification of everything we love about Danny Dyer

Cor blimey and love a duck, mate: has it really been a whole decade since we learned Cockney geezer Danny Dyer was related to King Edward III in a right royal episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Since then the outspoken actor and campaigner has staked a convincing claim to be the nation’s gobby screen sweetheart, from his eight-year run as landlord Mick Carter on EastEnders to calling Brexit facilitator David Cameron a “tw*t” on live telly in 2019. 

More recently he and Katherine Parkinson were the unexpected emotional linchpin of Jilly Cooper’s 2024 bonkbuster series Rivals on Disney+, and last year Dyer bagged a BAFTA for his turn in Sky comedy Mr Bigstuff, which included a scene of him running down a street starkers.

It’s been a turbulent career, and Dyer – who has spoken openly of his struggles with drug addiction – seems charmingly level-headed about his ongoing purple patch.  

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If you could point to a thread running through the DD canon it would surely be football, football, football. Early acting roles in Vinnie Jones vehicle Mean Machine (2001) and hooligan drama The Football Factory (2004) led to Dyer’s long-running side hustle in presenting a ton of documentaries on ruck-ready supporters and casual culture. He even attempted to splice football hooliganism with the classic movie rom-com template in Marching Powder (2025) which was… uh… well, let’s just say it had a lot of energy. 

In the blistering One Last Deal, Dyer has swapped the Sergio Tacchini tracksuit top for a swankier ensemble (sharp suit, braces, Pierre Cardin watch) to play a hard-charging football agent. The transfer window being about to slam shut has coincided with London’s hottest day of the year; veteran fixer Jimmy Banks is already sweating because his single remaining client – a cocky Premier League striker charged with sexual assault – is waiting to hear what verdict will be handed down. 

Except Banks does not seem particularly worried about which way the trial will go. As he fields hand-free calls in a wood-panelled office with a pool table, ukulele and walls crammed with framed testaments to his success he clearly seems to think a not guilty result is guaranteed. His approach to renegotiating his client’s contract – and his corresponding agent percentage – is unwaveringly aggressive. (“I’ve got your bollocks in a vice,” he says at one point, and Dyer clearly relishes every syllable.) 

Read more:

• Danny Dyer on fame, therapy and working-class people in politics: ‘We need a f**king leader’
• Danny Dyer says people looked at him ‘like scum’ while he sold the Big Issue in London
• How fan-owned football clubs are putting the power in the hands of the supporters

This will turn out to be a roller coaster day. Banks tries to placate his estranged art dealer daughter while capitalising on another potentially megabucks transfer opportunity, only for some dodgy past dealings to resurface in the form of a menacing blackmailer bombarding him with incriminating recordings.

It is implied that Banks has been in rehab but he has a stacked cabinet of spirits for celebrating or self-destructing, and the situation seems to constantly pinball between those two emotional poles. 

It is a one-man show. Banks never leaves his office, and while we can hear the other side of his various aggro phone conversations and conference calls, Dyer is the only actor on-screen. In many ways, the casting is a masterstroke: Banks is an extrovert motormouth who talks to himself constantly and with Dyer it genuinely never feels forced.

The theatrical one-room conceit also nods to Dyer’s hinterland as a protégé of Harold Pinter, who helped give the young actor his start on stage.  

Once you realise this is going to be a hermetically sealed chamber piece, it is hard not to jump ahead and wonder how it will manage to sustain tension for 90 minutes while also delivering a satisfying ending. But director Brendan Muldowney smartly shoots Dyer from a rotating array of unexpected angles so visually things never seem overly repetitive.

It also feels almost intentional that Dyer and Muldowney veer off for an unexpected little diversion at 45 minutes in, a sort of half-time break from the escalating tension.  

The end result is a celebration and magnification of everything we love about Danny Dyer that also manages to undercut his relentlessly bolshy persona. So it’s a shame that the subject matter and star means the potential audience will likely be rather self-selecting. There is more to life than football, and a lot of that is explored here. 

One Last Deal is in cinemas from 13 March 

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