Kneecap: Trainspotting meets the Troubles in anarchically fun Irish-language rap comedy
The Troubles meets Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting in Kneecap, a riotous Belfast-set comedy tracking the fictional rise of a real-life hip-hop trio whose music harks back to the glory days of gangsta rap. Rich Peppiatt’s film excels as a love letter to the Irish language and a raucous portrait of the lost generation growing up in post-ceasefire Northern Ireland. But these deeper themes are optional extras in a movie brimming with glorious skits involving ketamine, mosh-pits, and mad-cap chases.
Boyle’s gonzo portrait of heroin addicts romping through Nineties Edinburgh is the obvious influence on Peppiatt’s pedal-to-the-floor directing. Yet what might have been a derivative affair is elevated by heartfelt performances by the Kneecap threesome of Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh. First-time actors, they impress playing cartoonish versions of their real selves while poking fun at clichés about Northern Ireland and its history of conflict. It’s Spice World with Semtex – and an absolute hoot.
Kneecap in the real world have proudly upheld hip-hop’s tradition of scaring the bejaysus out of the moral majority. Their early single Cearta – performed, like most of their material, in Irish – was banned by Irish radio for “drug references and cursing”. Unionist politicians later condemned the group for leading chants of “Brits Out” in a Belfast music venue the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had visited the previous day – a controversy Peppiatt re-stages with anarchic glee.
The cast is headed by Michael Fassbender, who famously portrayed real-life Republican Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger in 2008. Here, he plays a watered-down Sands in the form of Arlo, a former terrorist who faked his death to escape the authorities – leaving his son (Ó Cairealláin) to grow up without a father.
Naoise, though, doesn’t have time for daddy issues. He and his best friend, Liam (Ó Hannaidh), are gainfully employed selling drugs bought off the dark web. When they are arrested and insist on being interrogated in Irish, school teacher JJ (Ó Dochartaigh) is brought in as a translator. Noting Liam’s hand-written lyrics, the budding music producer encourages the duo to pour their passion for Irish into hip hop and, together, the three form Kneecap.
There’s lots of music in Kneecap and the Public Enemy-style raps are explosive. But Peppiatt never forgets he’s making a movie rather than an extended music video and, as the trio grow in popularity, they attract the attention of bungling dissident Republicans and the “peelers” in the PSNI. Liam must also navigate a “through the barricades” romance with protestant Georgia (Jessica Reynolds) – all against the background of a (real life) campaign for Irish to receive official language status in Northern Ireland.
Kneecap is helter-skelter and often hilarious – a scene in which the group accidentally take ketamine before a show is particularly hysterical. Most impressively of all, Peppiatt captures the raw power of a great rap song. Hard-punching and cheerfully riotous, the film directs a well-placed kick at the nether regions to anyone who insists music, politics and cinema cannot mix.
18 cert, 105 minutes. In cinemas August 23