Cheeky (in every sense of the word), ill-tempered and over-caffeinated would be the best way to describe Kneecap, a hip-hop trio from Ireland. It’s also the best way to describe Kneecap, a new quasi-autobiographical film about how this group came to be.
The men of Kneecap — Mo Chara (the Elliot Page-looking Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh), Móglaí Bap (the Jemaine Clement-looking Naoise Ó Cairealláin) and DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh, who looks like their parole officer) — got together with reporter-turned-filmmaker Rich Peppiatt for this hella fictionalized origin story. Not only did they co-conceive the story, they also do an adequate job playing themselves.
According to the film, the three met in the last decade, when the Northern Irish were marching to keep their Irish language alive. Chara and Bap are tracksuit-wearing drug dealers, trying and usually failing to get away from cops (or “peelers,” as they call them) and drug-hating Irish Republicans. Meanwhile, Próvaí is a mild-mannered music teacher whose past life as a beatmaker is tucked away in his garage.
With Próvaí itching to do something rebellious and Chara carrying around a notebook full of Irish rhymes, they convince Bap to join them in becoming a rap group, named after the punishment Irish paramilitaries used to give drug pushers. Próvaí, who rocks an Irish-flag balaclava to preserve his anonymity and keep his day job, comes up with the beats. Chara and Bap rap in their native tongue, which was taught to them by Bap’s revolutionary-fugitive dad, played by none other than Michael Fassbender. (Who better to play a stubborn Irish freedom fighter than the one who played Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger?)
The group has built themselves up as the License to Ill-era Beastie Boys of Belfast, crude-but-proud hooligans who stick it to the fuzz, the Brits and other oppressive C-words (you’ll be hearing that word a lot) by rapping in indigenous Irish Gaelic — usually about drugs. Naturally, the movie, which won the NEXT Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is also a chest-thumping hot mess. (Subtitles hit the screen whenever characters talk in Gaelic, but I could’ve used subtitles when they spoke English too.) People have already been calling it a cross between Trainspotting and 8 Mile. To me, it’s more like Ken Loach consumed a shitload of molly at a rave and decided to remake A Hard Day’s Night.
Kneecap rolls like a dated throwback to 2000s-era lowbrow comedies. (Much like dude-bro auteur Todd Phillips, Peppiatt is a former documentarian whose filmmaking style melds visual stylishness with vulgar storytelling.) It’s also reminiscent of those bratty, Cool Cymru comedies that came out of the U.K. — like Twin Town and Human Traffic — in the late ’90s. The whole thing runs on cocaine and obnoxiousness, as our profane, hell-raising triumvirate seeks to become stars and maintain their heritage by being unruly, coked-up punks who toss drug samples to their fans. You certainly won’t see that shit in a Jim Sheridan film.
No matter how rude, snarling and morally reprehensible these lowlife scumbags (their words, not mine) get, they’re still surrounded by antagonists, from a bullying detective (Josie Walker) to the brutish, dunderheaded leader of Radical Republicans Against Drugs (Adam Best), who make them look like noble folk heroes in comparison. Almost cartoonish in their villainy, these barely fleshed-out caricatures are mostly there to keep our boys down. Even Fassbender’s character is a textbook deadbeat dad, too wrapped up in The Cause to notice how much of a shitty husband and father he’s become.
I would’ve preferred to see an actual documentary about Kneecap’s strange, twisted journey. (As expected, the movie ends with footage of them performing live through the years.) But that wouldn’t have been as on-brand as Kneecap is. Seeing as how the boys are petulant, juvenile, indecipherable and not everybody’s cup of tea, it makes sense that a movie about them would give off the same divisive, dickheaded vibes.
