Kneecap review: An honest and irreverent insight into Belfast rappers’ free-living republicanism

Young tearaways Naoise and Liam Óg have been friends since childhood, and identify as members of the so-called ‘post-Troubles generation’. But while that label might suggest everything is tickety-boo, gainful employment is scarce on the streets of west Belfast, and in fairness Naoise and Liam Óg don’t seem all that motivated anyway. For they’ve found a lucrative way of life — selling drugs they source on the internet.

Kneecap | official trailer

They do this, and most other things, through the medium of Irish: Naoise’s dad was a legendary IRA bomber (Michael Fassbender), and passionate gaelgoir, who told his son that “every word of Irish spoken is like a bullet for the cause”. He disappeared 10 years ago, supposedly drowned at sea, but Naoise and Liam Óg have taken his words to heart, and when Liam Óg is arrested at a rave, he refuses to speak English to the PSNI interrogators, and demands a translator.

Enter JJ (JJ Ó Dochartaigh), a bemused gaelscoil music teacher, who does his best to soften Liam’s robust diatribes in his translations before things get out of hand. This situation, based on a real incident, provides the funniest scenes in the film, as Irish becomes an obfuscating weapon against those Liam imagines are oppressing him (he was selling drugs, all the same). At one point an exasperated police detective asks him, “why can’t you just speak the Queen’s English, you Fenian c***!”. Indeed.

In the confusion, JJ leaves the police station with a book full of Naoise and Liam Óg’s lyrics — angry verse poems the teacher believes might make great rap. He persuades the boys to come to his home studio, and they record a song, the potential of which is obvious. They find a name for themselves, and stage personas — Naoise is now Móglaí Bap, Liam is Mo Chara, JJ is DJ Provaí. Kneecap is born, and a few chaotic pub gigs turn them into a social media sensation.

Liam, meanwhile, has begun an across-the-divide affair with a young Protestant woman called Georgia (Jessica Reynolds), who happens to be the niece of a spiteful PSNI officer, Detective Ellis (Josie Walker). A Republican splinter group called the RRAD are after the boys too, having taken exception to their drug-dealing, and Naoise’s father might not be entirely dead after all...

Even the IRA get a tentative poke: the RRAD are a bit like Monty Python’s People’s Front of Judea

Kneecap has a sense of humour about northern politics, and expects you to as well. The film’s expletive level is off the charts, but bad language well used can be an irreverent joy, and that’s certainly the case here. Everything is a target for satire: when Liam steals a baton off a group of practising Orangemen, they chase him down a street, an incident he later describes as a “cross-community running club”.

Even the IRA get a tentative poke: the RRAD are a bit like Monty Python’s People’s Front of Judea.

The backdrop of all this is the now infamous Irish Language Act, intended to grant equal status to Gaeilge and the ostensible cause of the Northern Ireland executive’s collapse. The fact that the status of a minority language can cause those kinds of ripples is rich evidence of how little things have progressed.

It’s one of the most honest films I’ve seen about the North, but Kneecap is only intermittently serious — what it mainly is is a lot of fun. The music is great, and while Irish of the Belfast school may not be quite so musical as the dialects spoken in Kerry or Galway, it has a hard, urban twang that perfectly suits the confrontational rhythms of hip hop. A film to watch out for, for sure.

KNEECAP will have its Irish premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh on 9 July 2024. It opens in cinemas across Ireland on 8 August 2024.