From left, hip-hop trio Mo Chara, Dj Provaí and Móglaí Bap riff on their stage personas and day-to-day personal lives in Kneecap.Supplied
- Kneecap
- Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt
- Starring Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and Michael Fassbender
- Classification N/A; 105 minutes
- Opens in select theatres Aug. 2
Critic’s Pick
A meta-contextual music-world biopic whose success relies upon one giant bet paying off big, the new comedy Kneecap is a riotous delight that will have even the most staid audiences ready to flip the bird.
When writer-director Rich Peppiatt first decided to make a fictionalized movie chronicling the rise of the controversial real-life Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap, who rap in a blend of English and the endangered Irish mother tongue, the filmmaker wanted to cast the musicians as themselves. Except Peppiatt had no idea whether Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh could act. Turns out, the three young men can, and then some, riffing on both their stage personas and day-to-day personal lives with the kind of slick charm that cements the lads as natural-born performers.
Shot with the zigzagging energy of an incendiary rap battle and laced with the sharp politics of a generation that’s been too long disenfranchised, Peppiatt’s film is both a rags-to-semi-riches success story, and a treatise on Irish geopolitics post-Troubles. Think 8 Mile meets Trainspotting, shot through with a lightning bolt of don’t-give-a-fig ferocity.
When we first meet Naoise and Liam, the childhood friends turned twentysomething drug dealers are barely scraping by in West Belfast. Naoise is also dealing with the emotional fallout of his father, a high-ranking Irish Republican Army militant named Arlo (Michael Fassbender, lending a big boost of star power), having abandoned the family years ago to go on the run from authorities. With several pounds’ worth of chips on their shoulders and a fierce pride of their heritage – as Arlo once told his kids, “Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom” – Naoise and Liam seem set on a path to absolutely nowhere.
The Irish rappers have an impressive presence on-screen. It can be difficult to figure out where the performances stop and the real men start.Supplied
But then through a twist of fate – and with the unintentional aid of peelers, a.k.a. the police – Naoise hooks up with local schoolteacher JJ, an amateur DJ who is also a fierce advocate of the Irish language. Together, the three transform notebook scribbling into set-the-roof-on-fire tracks – with JJ donning a balaclava to protect his daytime identity – and gradually grab the attention of the media, and less savoury institutions.
With darts tossed at portraits of Margaret Thatcher, scenes in which Liam and his Protestant girlfriend (Jessica Reynolds) throw sectarian insults at each other as a form of foreplay, and one especially traumatizing moment of police brutality, Peppiatt’s film is a blistering, provocative film that doesn’t care to be polite. Which is what makes it such a propulsive breath of fresh air, as dirty, complicated, and electric as the musicians it chronicles.
Crucially, Peppiatt knows how to have as much fun on the screen as his central characters do on stage. With lyrics of Kneecap tracks bursting onto the screen, frenetic sex scenes that are both hilarious and hot, plus one claymation moment that feels pulled straight out of early MTV, the director’s feature-film debut is a frank and inventive act of storytelling.
It also cannot be emphasized just how impressive Naoise, Liam and JJ are onscreen. So much so that it’s hard to figure out where the performances stop and the real men start. The trio might be especially busy with their on-stage careers, but should Kneecap ever fizzle out as a troupe, each member has a bright future in the movies. But if they want to take a cue from Eminem and just stick to music, that’s fine, too.