‘Kneecap’: Sundance Review

Dir/scr: Rich Peppiatt. UK/Ireland. 2024. 105mins

You could say that Kneecap – the origins story of the bawdily subversive Irish-language hip hop group of the same name – is ”the bomb”, and it would fit in fantastically with the tone of the piece. The funniest thing to come out of Belfast since [fill in the blank if you can], Kneecap is a riot which strains let’s-form-a-band film tropes (they’re the ‘shit Beatles’ via The Commitments), stirs in some Monty Python, sucks up the Young Offenders in all its shell-suited glory and blows it out at audiences in a blast of two-fingered audaciity. The humour is particular, and it’s not of the ‘Daily Mail reader’ variety but if bad ketamine trips, terrorist jokes, and bum cheeks stencilled with ‘Brits Out’ are your bag, Kneecap is just the film for you.

 You couldn’t make it up – and they haven’t, as end credit footage testifies.

A veritable Good Friday Agreement of backers (from the BFI to Curzon to Screen Ireland and the country’s Irish-language initiatives along with Northern Ireland Screen) have brought Kneecap to the screen, and it’s a testament to all of them that its humour appears not to have been hosed down along the way. The film is clearly destined for cult status, and is just as ramshackle as any Blues Brothers or Spinal Tap was in its day – although how it gets to audiences after its Sundance premiere is for the marketers to work very, very hard on. SPC swooped early on at Sundance to take North America and a raft of international rights, encouraged no doubt by the appearance of Michael Fassbender in a significant role. Ireland through Wildcard will probably break records, giving audiences the chance to laugh at last at something so dreadful as The Troubles. The UK via Curzon should attract headlines – and crowds to match.

The thing about Kneecap – in a significant departure from other films of its ilk – is that, playing themselves, the three leads give performances strong enough to look professional, especially reluctant band member JJ Ó Dochartaigh as a mild-mannered substitute Irish teacher turned sweary DJ. Although the film is not 100 percent factual, it is close enough to the real thing: google Kneecap for full details of the band’s origins myriad controversies and antics, all fully provoked and relished.

Set in a Belfast that marks its own card – blissfully, there is no Harland & Wolff shipyard establishing shot to be seen – Kneecap makes no bones about the Republican heritage of its protagonists. Fassbender plays the terrorist father of young Naoise Ó Cairealláin. He’s a veteran of dirty protests and IRA bombing campaigns, a hard-eyed killer who leaves his son for a life on the lam, fakes his own death and turns up as a yoga teacher, leading to a ‘Bobby Sandals’ joke. He also teaches Naoise and his best friend Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh how to speak Irish. ‘Every word is a bullet,’ he says, and he means it.

Cut to the present day and Naoise’s depressed single mum (Simone Kirby) has become housebound. Naoise and Liam are part of a post-Good Friday generation, navigating the debris of the past and an uncertain present of low-level drug dealing, ‘stylish’ shell suits and being self-professed ‘low life scum’. The drugs attract the attention of Radical Republicans Against Drugs (RRAD), a hilarious IRA riff on the People’s Front of Judea gags from Life Of Brian. The missing dad attracts the attention of a hard-line Special Branch officer. And Naoise attracts the attention of a hot Unionist lass who promises to ‘blow him like a Brighton hotel’. Yes, that’s the humour, but we have been warned: earlier, when asked not to joke about the Irish famine of the mid-1800s, JJ replies with a tart ‘too soon?’. It’s never too soon for Kneecap.

When JJ encounters Naoise and Liam they will soon find themselves transformed into Kneecap: DJ Provaí, Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara respectively. The Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont is at a stalemate, meanwhile, and the nascent band finds itself part of a civil rights movement to have Irish recognised as the country’s native language. You couldn’t make it up – and they haven’t, as end credit footage testifies.

Writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s screenplay tips its hat to all its predecessors while still staking a claim to the raw haphazardness of life in Belfast today. He has worked closely with editors Julian Ulrichs and Chris Gill to channel the band’s rebel & drug-fuelled energy without stalling momentum, building carefully even as the jokes come thick and fast and using animation for emphasis. Whoever transformed these three performers into actors needs to be acknowledged, while Nicola Moroney’s production design is a lovely comment – Naoise’s two-up, two-down Belfast terrace is a straight update from Graham Reid’s Billy Trilogy.

Love them/it or loath them/it, the point of Kneecap is that they genuinely don’t care — take them as they are. For many, that’s too much. For many more, though, it will just make them all the more appealing.