#jj o dochartaigh

[rickchung]

Kneecap (dir. Rich Peppiatt).

[The] controversial West Belfast hip-hop trio, [...] known for rapping republican lyrics in their native Irish language, star in their own titular biographical film about their rise to fame and infamy. Set in 2019, [...] Peppiatt directs the plainly titled Kneecap with an energetic, riotous verve to its provocative, explicitly anti-UK material of rebellion.

[thepeoplesmovies]

Film Review - Kneecap (2024)

Not heard of Rich Peppiatt? Kneecap, will change that. As his Belfast-set docudrama explodes off the screen, it leaves an unforgettable calling card and a sense of excitement and anticipation. If this is his debut feature film, what’s next? The winner of the Audience Award at Sundance back in January, it’s the dramatized version of the true story of Northern Ireland hip-hop trio, the Kneecap of…

[kevrocksicehouse]

Kneecap

D: Rich Peppiatt (2024).

Kneecap is a political comedy-drama biopic of an Irish hip hop trio (who play themselves) that doubles as a portrait of post-Troubles Ireland and a polemic for the preservation of the Irish language. If you think that sounds like somebody driving a didactic truck over a worn rope bridge of a story, well you’re not entirely wrong, but Rich Peppiatt somehow sends it careening to the other side. The band forms when Liam O Hannaidh, an aimless Belfast teenager is arrested and refuses to talk to the police in anything but the Irish he learned from his best friend Naioise O Caireallain and his father Arlo (Michael Fassbender) who is now a political fugitive. Frustrated the cops call in JJ O Dochartaigh a middle-aged music teacher for an Irish-language school, to translate. He accidentally takes home Liam’s notebook which contains song lyrics, sets them to music and then meets with Hannaidh and Caireallain to say “These are great! Let’s form a group” proving that truth is more cliched than fiction.

The rest of the movie follows (and sometimes upends) standard biopic as the band’s music, rapped in a mix of English and Irish (the filmmakers helpfully provide subtitles) and adding a political bent to tales of low-life tales of thuggery and celebrations of drugs (which the movie refreshingly doesn’t sidestep or moralize about) brings them a notoriety that attracts the attention of record scouts, the police (Josie Walker playing a Javert-with-a-twist is just one example of the films zigzag plotting), and a corrupt vigilante posse called Radical Republicans Against Drugs, who almost subject our heroes to the method of torture that inspired the band’s name. The movie’s blend of politics, thug life and family drama really is a blend, one that suggest if the lowlifes of Trainspotting were both educated and armed.