‘Kneecap’ Review: Oppression, Drugs & Hibernian Hip-Hop

Riding the wave of their rapidly advancing career in Irish-language hip-hop, Belfast band Kneecap have created a biopic like no other. In lieu of the usual beats of a rise-to-fame story is a boisterous exploration of what matters to the politically-charged trio the most: purpose. For 90 minutes, we see exactly what drove them to head-turning fame—spoiler alert, it didn’t come from thin air.

Kneecap is riddled with displays of micro- and macro-aggression towards the Irish language and the Catholic communities that try to keep it alive. Early on, in the film, in a club and then a jail cell where we meet the trio for the first time, an apt comparison is made. What is a very gracious and symbolic opening, meeting peace with war in a militia-religious stand-off, comes crashing down to Earth when a PSNI officer, frustrated at Liam Óg’s (better known by his stage name Mo Chara) insistence on speaking Irish, looks him square in the eye and says “why don’t you speak to Queen’s English you Fenian c*nt?” There’s a lot to unpack in the audible recoil that rippled through the theatre at this early display of vitriol, but perhaps what Kneecap is saying with this jab, as well as the many variants that the film rides on pretty consistently throughout its runtime, is that the issue is simply with hate: the violence is alive, it is present, and it rears its ugly head worldwide.

After being released from his cell, Liam reunites with Naoise (stage name Moglaí Bap). Together, the self-proclaimed ‘low-life scum’ drink and club excessively to escape their oppressed reality—a reality only made known to them by their Republican father Arló (played with twitching severity by Michael Fassbender). It’s not until they’re brought (somewhat) down to earth by Irish-language music teacher JJ (soon to be the balaclava’d DJ Provaí) that they realise the potential they have to create music about their oppression, with language as their weapon of choice; it’s what got Liam Óg out of jail, as according to Arló, ‘every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom.’ But immediately, eyebrows raise; in a dialogue in a doctor’s office about ‘generational trauma’ post-Troubles, even Rich Peppiatt doesn’t shy away from the tenuous nature of this excuse to get pissed in a garage. So why lean into the ‘low-life scum’ identity?

This is where the message, buried in Kneecap’s music, makes a surface-level appearance. Peppiatt and the trio weave a narrative that binds the plight of the Irish with that of young people in an economic crisis caused by the very same ideology. What starts as a slightly clunky dialogue about ‘generational trauma’ gradually morphs into a narrative that not only chronicles the origins of the band as struggling youths but the narrative that drives them. A symbolic moment where JJ reunites with the band, looking in the mirror La Haine-style while pulling on the tricolour balaclava allows him to transcend the age gap, solidifying the relevance of the conflict with the youth today. The film almost becomes a thought process in action, hence it provides a bittier, more digestible analysis of the state of things than the loud, beat-focused music.

This is immediately clear in the character relationships, cross-generational conflicts becoming as big of a threat to their success as the PSNI and yet providing a much more nuanced approach to the prevalent theme of drug abuse. Not only is it a way for them to attract young audiences, but the escape they provide is itself an augmentation of postcolonial ideas of critical fabulation, of creating a world outside of history for oppressed people to exist. No less does this apply to the colonisation of the North of Ireland (a particularly harrowing drug trip involving the face of Gerry Adams is enough to hammer this home), but it also ties in neatly with youth movements. One young promoter at one of their gigs provides a watershed moment in the film that pushes the band to commit fully to their vision when she says she’s beginning to learn Irish because of them. When the young are being short-changed by their predecessors, who put their grievances down to overspending on coffee and avocado toast, young adults have no choice but to identify with the closest oppressed people they have. I won’t be surprised when, upon seeing this film, hundreds of young Brits wear their 1/16th of Irish blood on their sleeve with pride. If the young aren’t being listened to, they might as well be talking in a different language—what better way to do so than listening to Irish hip-hop, or even learning the language themselves?

The reality of a unified Ireland is still a complicated and contentious matter, on both sides of the fold. What Kneecap is tapping into with their music, but even more so with this film, is that there is a lot of work that needs to be done first, for the Catholic population but also for the youth population in Ireland, before unification is possible. It may be an eternal ideal that is never reached, but the fruits of this labour are as real and necessary as any. The reason for their demeanour, for the tone of the film, and even for the Scott Pilgrim-esque, cartoony overlays (as a result of tripping balls, rather than being based on a comic book) is because Kneecap is playing the blame game. What do the plight of youth and the plight of Irish Catholics actually have in common? And why would they want to revive an old sectarian conflict, with underlying tensions between classes and religions, that has repercussions worldwide? They all share perpetrators, who are still at large—why do you think this sectarian conflict sounds so familiar? Kneecap certainly do, and they’re not afraid to add it to the list of malpractices by a government happy to watch the country they swear to serve to crumble around them.

With the success of Sinn Fein in the latest election, and the appointment of Hilary Benn as Northern Ireland Secretary, who knows what’s possible? All we know for sure is that it’s too late for those currently in power to do anything—the power for change, as always, is in the hands of youth. Kneecap is at the epicentre of this, and if this new biopic is anything to go by, there are definitely reasons to be optimistic.

Kneecap is in cinemas now