Rap and reality collide in director Rich Peppiatt’s Sundance-winning feature.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News

The film “Kneecap” is an Irish effort named after a real-life Irish hip-hop group from West Belfast, Northern Ireland, founded by Moglai Bap, aka Naoise, Mo Chara, aka Liam Og, and their mentor and partner DJ Provai, aka JJ O Dochartaigh. Kneecap, the band, is best known for rapping in the Ulster Gaelic dialect of West Belfast (as well as in English). To paraphrase a paternal figure in both young men’s lives, “Every word of Irish spoken is like a bullet fired for Irish freedom.”

The young rapping and DJ-ing singer-songwriters play themselves in the film alongside a cast of professional actors. Just think of it as a bit of Celtic neo-realism. Co-written with band members and directed by British-Irish filmmaker Rich Peppiatt, making his feature debut. “Kneecap” is a rebellious exclamation in more ways than one. This may be why it won an audience award at Sundance in 2024. Shot in Belfast in 2023, “Kneecap” seems to spring directly from the concrete, graffiti, murals, row houses, and rain of the city, mixing real-life and fiction and people playing themselves with actors such as Michael Fassbender as Arlo, the long-missing father of Moglai. Fassbender is the film’s rebel heart, an adult Irishman who taught the boyhood friends their people’s history and instilled in them the desire to be free from a culture that had, in a bit of Orwellian insanity, banned the Irish language in Ireland.

Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin in 'Kneecap.’ (Helen Sloan/Sony Pictures Classics)
Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin in ‘Kneecap.’ (Helen Sloan/Sony Pictures Classics)

“Kneecap” does not shy away from the fact that its “heroes” get a boost selling drugs in their youth and later help finance their careers. “What chance did the (expletive) wee boy have?” asks Moglai’s father, Arlo. In flashbacks, we see altar boys Moglai and Mo stuff an incense burner with weed (That’s a high Mass for you, right?). Later, Moglai and Mo learn to intercept the postman’s mail because it often has ketamine from India and MDA from the Netherlands in it (it’s good to be in the EU). As actors, Mo Chara and Moglai Bap make up for their lack of conventional experience with rap-honed humor, performance savvy, and bravado. It’s axiomatic to say that their acting is lived-in. But the truth is that also performing onstage has paved the way to the camera for these young men.

The professional supporting cast has its standouts, too. As Mo Chara’s sexually inventive girlfriend Georgia, Jessica Reynolds (TV’s “Outlander”) is a big asset here. The same is true for Simone Kirby (“His Dark Materials”) as Arlo’s depressed “widow” Dolores, who is entombed in her flat’s patterned upholstery and wallpaper; and the tall Belfast-born Josie Walker (“Belfast”) as the cruel, Brit-sympathizing “peeler” Detective Ellis. Making recurrent appearances are three paramilitary bruisers known as the Radical Republicans Against Drugs or R.R.A.D. These gentlemen claim to protect the community by beating the film’s protagonists to a bloody pulp. Inspired by Arlo’s yellow leather journal, the film’s two poets-in-the-making team with music teacher JJ, compose some lyrics and record them in JJ’s garage. “It’s no Abbey Road,” JJ remarks. “Abbey, what?” they respond. Their first gig is at a pub where a few bewildered pensioners nurse their pints and stare. But a young woman behind the bar records them on her phone and sends it out on the ether. Soon, the pub fills up with (underage?) local school kids in uniforms. One couplet in a “Kneecap” rhymes “marijuana” and “Connemara.” Onstage, JJ likes to bare his butt, which has the words “Brits” and “Out” scrawled on his cheeks. 

“Kneecap” is a raucous “A Star Is Born”-type fable about a couple of designated “low-life scum” who come from nowhere and rise up to theater-filling, mosh pit-equipped, musical culture heroes. Unlike the recent “Back to Black,” “Kneecap” doesn’t end with death. Instead, we get an actual Claymation scene in which our performers are in a super-stoned, altered reality. “Kneecap” is distinctive in other ways, too. One of them is the way it uses subtitles. Another is the Gerry Adams cameo.

‘Kneecap’

Rating: R, drug content, profanity, sexually suggestive, nudity.

Cast: Moglai Bap, Mo Chara, DJ Provai

Director: Rich Peppiatt

Writer: Peppiatt, Moglai Bapp, Mo Chara

Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Where to Watch: Coolidge Corner Theater, AMC Boston Common, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, and suburban theaters.

Grade: A-