With its rambunctious spirit, operating jokes about ketamine, and a prominently displayed pair of pallid buttocks daubed with bluntly anti-British sentiment, the fictionalised origin story of real-life Irish-language rap group Kneecap (who play themselves) most likely gained’t be for everybody. However the mixture of the profane and the political, the riotous humour and punchy modifying makes for one of many extra energising viewing experiences of the 12 months, and presumably one of many funniest.
West Belfast drug sellers Liam and Naoise, a part of what Liam’s irony-steeped voiceover describes as “the ceasefire era”, have been taught at an early age by Naoise’s republican father (Michael Fassbender) that “each phrase of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom”. It’s a message they took to coronary heart: now the lads use the language as a brick to lob on the cops. It’s this that brings them into contact with JJ Ó Dochartaigh, a music instructor at an Irish-language college who’s drafted in as a translator when Liam refuses to talk English throughout a police interrogation. JJ spots the potential within the scrawled Irish verses in Liam’s pocket book, and shortly Liam, Naoise and JJ have adopted the stage personas of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and the balaclava-clad DJ Próvai respectively.
Wealthy Peppiatt, making his characteristic debut after directing one of many band’s movies, brings a manic, irreverent power to the movie, incorporating scrawled animation that appears like toilet-door graffiti dropped at life. However the driving drive is the band, and performances that, if not polished precisely, are packed to the gills with bad-boy charisma.
