Prompted by Jason Di Rosso's interview with "British-Irish" director/co-writer Rich Peppiat. The other co-writers are the out-front rappers for the band: Naoise Ó Cairealláin aka Móglaí Bap and Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh aka Mo Chara. The basic idea was to make a biopic of the gangsta rap band Kneecap out of Belfast in the style of Trainspotting.
Apparently by accident these two young blokes meet up with unfulfilled school teacher JJ Ó Dochartaigh (soon enough Dj Próvai, looking a bit like a younger Eddie Marsan) who has dreams of musical stardom and a garage studio to prove it. He's impressed by Naoise's notebook, stuffed with gangsta lyrics in Gaelic/Irish, and takes a liking to their drugs. (The recreational use of pharmaceuticals is portrayed as mostly wholesome or at least not permanently damaging; there is no needlework or disease.) There is a dash of history, including a brief exploration of Michael Collins's loyalties, that establishes the incompleteness of the Irish revolution without dwelling on religious schisms. The remainder patchily sketches familial and social relations: patriarch Michael Fassbender starts well but becomes too stiff and the humour around him being in the same state as Schrodinger's cat is overplayed. Naoise himself generally presents as a blank-faced cypher.
Despite the regular losses of momentum things chug along OK with the odd bout of extreme humour up to the last 20-30 minutes when it becomes several different movies and loses coherency. The stagey trial of Ó Dochartaigh for lifestyle crimes and using the school facilities to master a track after his garage studio is murdered falls entirely flat. Fassbender and son in the alley is beyond ridiculous. The joke of Ó Hannaidh's sex life is initially amusing but is worn out by the end. I didn't enjoy the music very much and the lyrics themselves are mostly the same-old stuff that got stale a long time ago: drugs, sex, violence, poverty, expropriation. The political angle is unsophisticated; I guess we're to conclude that U2's pop-rock, Enya's Celtic and Sinéad O'Connor no longer (didn't ever?) cut it as protest music.
Sheila O'Malley provides an American view for Roger Ebert: three stars. Simone Kirby as an IRA widow is indeed fine. Beatrice Loayza. Gonzo. Wildly uneven.
