NATHAN WEINBENDER:
There are three blokes in West Belfast who perform hip-hop under the name Kneecap, with lyrics predominantly in the Irish language, perhaps better known as Gaelic. Their songs are about two things—their hatred for British colonialism and their love of recreational drugs—which means they have regularly been refused radio play in their home country. And like all things banned for alleged obscenity, their music has gotten a boost from all that pearl clutching.
Kneecap is also the name of a hugely entertaining new movie, a mostly made-up origin story of the band starring the musicians themselves. The writer-director, Rich Peppiatt, is a former journalist who has also directed some of Kneecap’s videos, so this film has both gritty realism and preposterous swagger.
The members of Kneecap, whose stage names are Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvai, deliver surprisingly rich performances for non-actors. Two of the guys are childhood friends and longtime neighborhood hooligans. The third is an Irish language teacher at a prep school, who’s called in to be an interpreter when one of the other guys is being interrogated by local police for a petty crime. The teacher is also a fledgling music producer, and the three of them start turning their observations and grievances into brash, energetic, gleefully R-rated rap songs.
They start to develop a cult following, not only because their hedonistic and brazenly partisan music is drawing ire but because they’re throwing baggies of ketamine into the crowd during performances. This riles up the authorities and the establishment that wants to delegitimize the Irish language, as well as a fringe group that calls itself the Radical Republicans Against Drugs. (Of course, the word “republican” has a much different connotation in Ireland.)
With its whip pans and on-screen animated flourishes, the film has a freewheeling visual style that recalls the early comedic works of Edgar Wright and Danny Boyle; in fact, the movie often resembles Trainspotting lite. It’s also impossible to not think about ’90s kitchen-sink comedies like The Commitments and The Full Monty, and the work of John Carney, whose films like Once and Sing Street are about working class people escaping their circumstances through their musical ambitions.
Kneecap is as much about the titular band’s rise to regional infamy as it is their sort-of-accidental political activism, and the movie also offers up a bunch of intriguing supporting characters: Móglaí Bap’s mother, still waiting for her fugitive IRA bomber husband to return (he’s played by Michael Fassbender, by far the most famous actor in the film); DJ Próvai’s wife, who’s in the dark about the band and has become a public advocate for preserving the Irish language; Mo Chara’s girlfriend, who’s both horrified by his anti-British sentiments and kinda turned on by it.
I’m going to assume that most of these things didn’t really happen, but it’s clear that Peppiatt, who developed the story with the band members, thought it would be amusing to throw these goofy, braggadocious guys into a narrative that’s part biopic, part raucous comedy and part political thriller. He was right, because Kneecap is as restless, scrappy and occasionally woozy as the guys it’s about.
For Spokane Public Radio, I'm Nathan Weinbender.
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Nathan Weinbender is a co-host of Spokane Public Radio’s Movies 101 heard Friday evenings at 6:30 here on KPBX.
