‘Kneecap’: Irish Rap Biopic Is Like Musical ‘Once’ Meets Eminem’s ‘8 Mile’
Telling the story of a real-life Northern Irish rap group, Kneecap pairs the politics of language with the visceral energy blast of a key bump.
Winning one of the audience awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie charts the origins of the eponymous rap trio in the years before the EU recognized the native Irish language. The group, each of them native Irish speakers from West Belfast, finds artistic liberation when young Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap make an unexpected alliance with schoolteacher and secret beatmaker JJ (who becomes the masked DJ Próvaí, to hide his identity). Together, their music unites around a love of drugs and their outrage over the continued political degradation of Irish speakers.
With lingering intergenerational trauma from the Troubles, Kneecap’s members turn the social strata of self-proclaimed “low-life scum” into a unique musical identity that champions the language and gives voice to an ongoing movement. Their rise to national popularity faces a prejudicial police force, censorship, and the ghosts that remain from families torn apart by political unrest. The debut feature from director Rich Peppiatt, Kneecap is a rousing antidote to summer multiplex spectacles, if a forgivably formulaic one.