Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella
RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER 4: MARBELLA - © 2019 Under Exclusive License to Signature Entertainment Ltd.
Twelve years on from the underground hit Rise of the Footsoldier in 2007, it would be hard to believe that almost a decade later audiences — and cinema for that matter — would be gifted not one but four entries into this slimy Goodfellas meets Layer Cake franchise, hopefully ending with Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella.
This latest entry from director Andrew Loveday does precisely what it says on the tin: taking the same characters of Pat Tate (Craig Fairbass), Tony Tucker (Terry Stone) and Craig Rolfe (Roland Manookian) — who died three films ago bare in mind — and following them in a prequel exploring sun, sex and a whole host of c-bombs. Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella is the more of the same. It is the same formula of exaggerated, hard men that has slowly fallen into the unironic palette of parody.
An eighty-minute feature that throws every inch of tone into the mix, hoping it would stick but instead leaves a dumbfounded and muddled entity with a film that is painfully obnoxious in every sense of the word. Character arcs and personality traits are contradictory and oxymoronic in the same breath and to make matter worse, the film dares to try and convince the audience that Craig Fairbass — aged fifty-five — is playing a character in his early twenties. It is all quite comical.
To take these exaggerated characters of dire personality seriously would be no different than believing in Santa Claus at sixty; it is time to grow up. The macho, toxic masculinity examination of throwing hands and popping pills has never been less appealing. It begs the question of what attraction remains from a film with three central characters so repulsive in dialogue that the only impressive factor is how the film manages to turn out the c-bomb as every third word in every single sentence.
Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella is released on home entertainment with a limited cinema release November 8th, 2019.
