Kneecap

Kneecap | 2024 | 18 | Dir. Rich Peppiatt | Ireland | IMDb 7.6 | Subtitled | 105 mins 

(sex scenes, drug use, large amount of bad language)

“Kneecap is one of the funniest films of the year…..but won’t be for everyone” (Guardian August 2024)

Before the word “Kneecap” became synonymous with outrage and protest at what is happening in Gaza, there was “Kneecap” the award-winning film, based on “Kneecap”, the real life, hip-hop band from Belfast.

To date, “Kneecap” has received 66 nominations and 28 awards including:

2024 - Winner British Independent Film Awards for best British Independent Film

2024 - Winner Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival

2025 - Winner Outstanding Debut by British Writer, Producer, Director at the Baftas

2025 - Ireland's Oscar entry for Best International Feature.

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 generation growing up in the 1990s post IRA, ceasefire Northern Ireland, known, as “ceasefire babies”. They are united by being too young to remember the Troubles — but they have got their own troubles to contend with.

However, these deeper themes are optional extras, in a movie brimming with glorious skits involving ketamine, mosh-pits, and mad-cap chases. 

“Trainspotter” 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”. 

The cast is headed by the always impressive, 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 Naoise 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, schoolteacher 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. It is hard punching and cheerfully riotous throughout”

(Abridged from Telegraph Article August 2024)

·       Screen 2 upstairs

·       Doors open 7pm and welcome from our chair Paula Stott @ 7.30pm

·       Film club discussion in upstairs lobby afterwards with tea and coffee provided

·       Free parking after 6pm if you DISPLAY an orange parking voucher, available from the Odeon lobby

·       Unreserved seating

·       We invite every viewer to score the film afterwards using a token system in the lobby