One final deal review – Danny Dier reviews phone leads on fast-talking football agent | film

Danny Dyer gives it a lot, but this still feels like a very contrived and heavy-handed piece of theater with a twist ending you’d see a mile away.

Dyer plays Jimmy Banks, a brash, fast-talking football agent who – in good and bad moods – is always spouting a certain monosyllable best described as a blunt or insult, generally beginning with “that…” or “you’re…”. He’s got Bluetooth, cutting huge deals all day long on the phone in his office with a toxic mixture of feigned charm and real menace, while fending off existential threats to his elusive livelihood; Wheels, handling and sway. Jerry Maguire is not.

Jimmy is about to get a huge new payday for a high-profile client, who is currently waiting for the jury to deliver its verdict on the rape charge. He won’t sign the club if things go wrong and Jimmy feels all sorts of other grief: his ex-wife is unhappy with the house she got as part of a divorce settlement, he’s forgotten his daughter’s birthday, his lawyer is giving him verbal advances, and he’s receiving vicious threatening calls from someone whose voice is distorted by some sort of “Darth Vader.”

What if his son was really guilty? Jimmy begins to think that the best place for him in this situation is under the bus, as he pursues alternative options, brutally exploiting his daughter’s friendship with another rising soccer star to obtain this young man’s phone number and pour all sorts of honeyed Mephistophelian promises into his ear. And the Darth Vader character keeps calling again.

Dyer certainly raises the energy levels and is the right actor, but the film is too predictable and the initial flashes of hilarity and sarcastic mischief give way to tearful tragedy.