Kneecap (2024) Movie Review: Ireland’s Raucous Spirit Shines In Spite of Overused Aesthetics

In 2022, Ireland submitted the critically lauded film “The Quiet Girl” as their representative for the Oscar for Best International Feature; the following January, the film clinched a nomination, becoming the first ever Irish film to do so. This achievement, bolstered by the film’s release coming in the same year that Northern Ireland finally passed legislation officially recognizing the Irish language, led many outsiders to the sudden realization that the Irish language even existed in the first place. This isn’t intended as a dig at either the tongue or those who speak it, but rather, it is precisely the point that Ireland’s latest Oscar submission, “Kneecap,” is attempting to make through its own raucous, unrelenting voice.

Within the film, the Irish language is described on more than one occasion as the dodo bird preserved in a glass case for the world to observe, without actually participating in its preservation; at some point, the dodo needs to be broken out and set free, before it dies in the settler’s cage and everyone brushes it off as little more than a relic of a bygone era. That most people outside Ireland—and, even more damningly, within Ireland—aren’t even aware that the indigenous language exists is enough to drum up fury in any rebellious activist, and what better way to channel that rage than through the persistently urgent megaphone that is rap music?

This is a question that comes to the minds of Liam and Naoise, two ragtag drug dealers in West Belfast who make their bones day by day selling powder and pissing off cops—in this sphere, appropriately named “pissers.” The anti-authoritarian attitude of these boys is shown as a matter of words as well as actions, as they communicate with each other and monolingual English cops alike in the Irish dialect—a trait they picked up from Naoise’s dissident, (officially) long-dead father (played by Michael Fassbender, given a rare opportunity to stretch his native Irish lilt). This reality, surprisingly, jives well with the much older JJ.

A high school teacher attempting to preserve and spread the Irish language in his own way, JJ’s unexpected union with Liam and Naoise—is fueled just as much by a vigorous desire to rub the Irish language into the colonizers’ faces as it is by an equally vigorous attraction to drugs—culminates in the formation of the rap group from which the film earns its title. This fiery proclamation of Irish pride against settler oppression burns bright just as that oppression begins to clamp down on their throats the moment they make their voices heard.

The core trio of the film is played by the actual members of Kneecap themselves, which is just one of the fun quirks that director Rich Peppiatt employs in this relentlessly energetic, quasi-musical biopic. Much of the fire that sets “Kneecap” on its way stems from Julian Ullrichs’s and Chris Gill’s editing, sending the film into a playful odyssey of split screens, onscreen cartoon graphics, and gleefully assembled drug trips. It’s an approach that captures the invigorated spirit of the group, to be sure, but one that also skews a bit too familiar and infrequently grating to make the film stand out as a truly rare experience.

There’s certainly an argument to be made that the chaos of its assembly lends “Kneecap” more credence as a lively outing meant to light a fire under the asses of the establishment, but in his frenzy to be unique, Peppiatt finds difficulty in choosing a point of narrative focus that reaches much deeper than the rough outline of the persecutions on display.

One would think, then, that a longer runtime would enable the director to give his protagonists more breathing room to explore their (and, by extension, the film’s) motivations beyond the CliffNotes version of the modern Irish struggle/perpetual crusade by The Man against hip-hop. But with style this frenetic, any more than the 105 minutes we get would risk giving even the most sedate viewer a mild seizure.

That the Kneecap trio manages to maintain a level of believable charisma throughout “Kneecap” despite not being professional actors is enough to streamline the end result before it gets too frantic for us to care. We’ve seen real-life subjects play themselves abysmally onscreen (see: The 15:17 to Paris) and, more specifically, we’ve seen rappers play themselves abysmally onscreen (see: 50 Cent in Get Rich or Die Tryin’… or anything else he’s ever done, really), so to see Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí bring decent texture to their own portrayals is honestly commendable enough to give the film a pass.

Why these three stage names were chosen is anyone’s guess (in fact, I don’t think any of them aside from DJ Próvaí is ever even mentioned in the film), which points to the greater issue at play here. As much as “Kneecap” wants to translate the essence of purposeful rebellion that keeps the Irish language alive when so many want it to just fade away, Peppiatt struggles to do much more than throw the infuriated words at the screen and let us assume the weight based solely on the knee-jerk reaction we have to the unruly political potential of rap.

Still, in a fight such as this, one lesson that “Kneecap” relays is that it’s important to keep the language thriving by any means, even if the substance Rich Peppiatt affords it isn’t as potent as it deserves to be—or as plentiful given its balance with English; is there even enough Irish dialogue here for the film to qualify for that Oscar? In 2017, Kneecap burst through the Irish floodgates and proved that they had something to say; their biopic just needs to take a step back and figure out what exactly that is.

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Kneecap (2024) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
The Cast of Kneecap (2024) Movie: Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh, Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds, Adam Best, Simone Kirby, Michael Fassbender
Kneecap (2024) Movie Runtime: 1h 42m, Genre: Comedy/Drama/Biography/Music

Where to watch Kneecap