Kneecap is a rebellious cinematic earworm

It’s become a cliche to deem an exceptional summertime indie release a welcome respite to loud blockbuster fare. However, Kneecap, a terrific movie regardless of release date, hits especially hard in the summer 2024 landscape. This movie has no time for cop protagonists. Mr. Beast as a storm chaser is nowhere in sight. It spits in the face of corporations rather than singing their praises. Kneecap is the rebellious shot in the arm this moviegoing season needed. Come out of the hot sun and bask instead in Kneecap’s warm glow.

The title of Kneecap refers to a real Belfast hip-hop group founded in 2017. Their tunes are sung in the Irish language, a form of communication largely erased in modern society. Kneecap tells a highly heightened version of this group’s origin. Band members Liam Óg "Mo Chara" Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise "Móglaí Bap" Ó Cairealláin, and JJ "DJ Próvaí" Ó Dochartaigh even get to play themselves. At the stories start, Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap are your typical twenty-something examples of “low life scum”. They do drugs, break into buildings, swear profusely, and shatter any laws they can think of. Ó Dochartaigh couldn’t be more different. This guy is a mild-mannered music teacher trying his hardest to pass on the Irish language to the next generation.

However, a chance encounter between Ó Dochartaigh and Mo Chara at a police station unearths the latter's collection of incredibly distinctive lyrics. These younger rebels have the verbiage, Ó Dochartaigh has the recording equipment. So begins Kneecap, a band that Ó Dochartaigh joins as the masked DJ Próvaí. Their provocative lyrics revel in drug use, anti-British sentiments, and chaos striking a toxic chord with the wrong folks in Belfast. Police officers and a group known as Radial Republicans Against Drugs persist in trying to eliminate Kneecap. Whenever you try to keep such transgressive tunes down, though, you end up fanning those sonic flames. 

Writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s (making his narrative feature film directorial debut) endlessly energetic rhythm for Kneecap is incredibly intoxicating. Imagine if 100 Gecs made a Danny Boyle version of a John Carney movie. That's the closest you'll get to conjuring up Kneecap's engrossing vibes. That description is extra impressive since Kneecap occupies the dreaded land of music biopic. Most entries in this genre are turgid affairs. They rigidly adhere to flat visuals and recreating exceedingly familiar historical events. Once boundary-pushing artists inhabit movies not interested in either rocking the boat or the unexpected. 

Kneecap, meanwhile, is propulsive and appropriately stylized. This rap trio is such a bizarre and unexpected musical lightning-in-a-bottle. Why shouldn’t a film about their lives be equally idiosyncratic? Take the delightful hand-drawn animated flourishes, for instance, scattered throughout Kneecap. These are a welcome presence on many levels, including how they look cribbed from Mo Chara’s notepad. The importance of that object is so grand its scribblings keep showing up on screen!  Stop-motion animation, meanwhile, shows up later to realize an aggressive ketamine trip. These touches accentuate the subversiveness underscoring this rap group. Recklessly alternating between mediums of cinematic expression is the kind of rule-breaking that would make Kneecap proud.

Peppiatt and cinematographer Ryan Kernaghan show so much visual imagination in Kneecap right from the feature’s opening minutes. Their distinctive aesthetic is immediately solidified in a prologue chronicling Móglaí Bap’s attempted baptism as a child. Told through slow-motion, ornate staging, and a closing shot evoking the blocking of a Renaissance painting, this sequence is a grand production. Every on-screen detail reinforces the personal significance this yarn has to Kneecap’s lead characters. The actual baptism almost certainly didn’t have such perfectly orchestrated lighting or well-timed bursts of tension. However, those grandiose aspects vividly translate the emotions and mythic nature of that event.

From there, Kneecap doesn’t let up on the deeply distinctive imagery. Here is a movie begging to be seen theatrically thanks to its utilization of every inch of the big screen. Immediately unforgettable shots like a pro-British running group chasing Mo Chara get so much of their power through precise framing. Especially memorable are recurring wide shots strikingly placing Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap against massive walls adorned with graffiti. Here we see another example of Irish citizens expressing themselves through any means necessary. The sheer scale of that wall communicates the tremendous legacy of rebellious art these musicians are following.

Extremely careful staging and camerawork also inform a nighttime phone call between Móglaí Bap and his absent father Arlo Ó Cairealláin (Michael Fassbender). An unblinking camera glides back and forth between the two men, each occupying a phone booth countless miles apart. However, the framing of this moment in an unbroken shot heartbreakingly suggests how close yet far away they are from emotional catharsis. These richly detailed images define Kneecap's soul. Such visuals demonstrate a level of care echoing the passion these rappers put into their tunes. Tired of modern pop culture properties with blocking solely interested in fitting within the visual parameters of a TikTok video? Kneecap is just the balm you’ve been looking for.

Kneecap's virtues even extend to the enjoyable trio of lead performances. These men aren't professional actors, yet they prove consistently compelling on-screen. The man known as "DJ Provai" delivers especially impressive results playing a variation on himself. This record-spinner isn’t just a fun straight man for his two Kneecap band members. Ó Dochartaigh gives off major Rhys Darby vibes in his endearing everyman persona. There’s something so instantly plucky and likable about him that he garners audience sympathy the moment he walks on-screen. Most impressively, Ó Dochartaigh is terrific in his more intimate scenes with his character’s wife, Caitlin (Fionnula Flaherty). Believable lived-in chemistry permeates the duo’s interactions. Constant reminders of inexperience wafting off other musicians delivering dramatic performances are M.I.A.

Even more impressive than these performances is Kneecap's maintaining of rebellious zeal while delivering delightful crowdpleaser sequences. That delicate balance rarely wavers thanks to Peppiatt and company eschewing focus-group-approved schmaltz in favor of the band's ideals. Exciting payoffs occur because of working-class solidarity rather than depictions of “good” wealthy people. Fiercely hostile rhetoric against cops, the British, and other toxic institutions never ceases despite what studio executives might say.

Kneecap will leave you wanting to cheer, but not at the expense of the provocative ideas that defined this rap group. It’s an impressive juggling act pulled off here with visual flair, palpable pathos, and plenty of catchy tunes. In the summer of 2024, that kind of filmmaking is more welcome than ever. However, whatever year it was released, Kneecap would register as a standout movie well worth banging your head to.