Arló Ó Cairealláin (Michael Fassbender) teaches his two sons Irish in a rebuke against the encroaching British law that did not recognize the language and sought to squash it out.  He disappears, becoming a bit of a folk hero in the process, leaving behind his wife Dolores (Simone Kirby) to raise Naoise (Móglaí Bap) and Liam (Mo Chara) on her own.  As the boys grow, they continue to butt heads with the law, and in a chance encounter with JJ Ó Dochartaigh (DJ Próvai) who serves as Liam’s translator after an arrest, the three renegade Irish speakers form the hip-hop band, Kneecap.  With socially-charged songs sung in Irish, the underground popularity of the group strikes fear in the police and Detective Ellis (Josie Walker) is selected to lead the charge to shut the group down. 

Rich Peppiatt directs the eponymous Kneecap from a script he wrote in conjunction with the band, all portraying themselves on screen.  The 105-minute long film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the NEXT Audience Award; the first win for its country.  Ireland, capitalizing on the film’s success, submitted it for consideration at the 97th Academy Awards.  Voters and general audiences alike are able to catch the title state-side courtesy of a theatrical release mounted by Sony Pictures Classics. 

With the artists working so close to the script, it is understandable that audiences may be wary as stories where the subject are involved tend to be heavily biased in one direction over the other.  Some of that bias is certainly here, but the band is also not afraid to punch down on themselves for the sake of the joke.  It is all in favor of the cheeky nature of the film which the boys immediately embrace in a voiceover how this is not going to just be archival footage of the troubles and car bombings.  Nicola Moroney’s production design also helps keep this live wire tone steady throughout as the scribbled lyrics of the songs will be scrawled this way and that across the screen, sometimes swapping out the more vulgar words for brief sketches.  It is an amusing film that keeps energy high at all times, but does run into a slight issue as the band, for a large part of the film, only has one song.  Catchy as it may be, the performances do begin to chase their own tail as the band gets high, storms the stage, and tries to find their voice. 

As for the boys, they seem to be having a good time in front of the camera and hamming it up for the lens.  The frat boy tone of it all aids in their performance so it does not feel like these are first time actors just plucked from the streets and placed in front of a lens.  To be sure since they are playing themselves, they already have some experience in working for the camera, but they also bridge the gap between singers and actors far better than most.  The standout here is JJ, and it comes from the very different energy which he brings to the trio as the older, steadily employed of the bunch with an activist girlfriend, Caitlin (Fionnuala Flaherty), back home who feels that the Kneecap band are doing more harm than good but totally unaware that her husband is up on stage each night with a Bratach na hÉireann face mask on.  The film finds a lot of humor in JJ acting out and keeping up with the boys in regards to their drunk use – often finding out too late that the ecstasy was mixed up with ketamine – and like his younger bandmates and costars, he does not flinch when the script asks him to debase himself. 

The heart of the film lies with the boys, though, specifically Naoise who is seen reconnecting with his father, and this is something we understand he has done since he was a boy in a bit of a split screen flashback of him answering a phone and his father, silent, is on the other end of the line.  But it is the ring that matters more than any words they would not have been able to share.  This all comes to a head late in the film when Naoise is kidnapped by the RRAD – the Radical Republicans Against Drugs – and his father comes to his rescue like an avenging angel.  The sequence really recontextualizes the film for audiences injecting it with a sense of true danger.  The band was not out just ruffling some feathers, but their actions were fueling a bit of a counterculture revolution against the British rule and political tensions were being brought up to a boiling point over the Irish Language Act. 

Kneecap is a propulsive little film that is easy enough to enjoy, even for those without the nuance of the laws which the band is railing against or for those who do not have an affinity for the genre of music.  It is a personal story, but one not so tied to the boys’ or the band’s experience that it cannot be enjoyed by all.  Peppiatt shakes the trappings of music biopic – a genre which has been experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity – and delivers instead a film that feels more like a socially charged comedy that just so happens to be telling a true story of the formation of the band.  The film loses its way a bit as it tries to balance the three storylines of the boys and fit it into context of how the band came together and found its audience, but it never strays too far and always brings its audience back with a surprisingly nuanced emotional investment or a raucous party sequence.  If it was not as carefully calibrated as it is, this would surely result in tonal whiplash, but for Naoise Liam, and JJ, it’s just all part of another day.