Movie review: 'Kneecap' a sex-drug-and-politics history of Irish hip-hop trio

In 2017, Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap broke into wide public view in Northern Ireland when a song they recorded in the Irish language was banned from the radio, putting them at the forefront of an effort to force the U.K. government to recognize the right to speak the native language.

The next year, the trio comprised of a self-described pair of "low-life scum" and a high school music teacher was playing concert halls, drawing big crowds and the ire of cops, Protestants and radical Republicans.

"Kneecap," the exuberant sex-drugs-and-hip-hop picture from writer-director Rich Peppiatt, retells the trio's story in highly fictionalized and wildly imagined fashion, with the three rappers playing themselves.

Moglai Bap (real name Naoise O Caireallain) and Mo Chara (Liam Og O Hannaidh) are the pair of low-life scum, who grew up together in West Belfast, learning the Irish language from Naoise's dad Arlo (Michael Fassbender), an IRA terrorist who literally disappears one night.

Selling drugs that they order through the dark web, the duo is living a life of hard partying when the cops finally catch them. When he's interrogated, Liam Og refuses to speak English, replying to questions in Irish and forcing the police to get an Irish interpreter.

Enter J.J., whose wife Caitlin (Fionnuala Flaherty), a leader in the Irish language movement, turns down the late-night call from the cops and sends her husband to the station where he saves Liam Og from the worst prosecution and swipes a small notebook that contains a page of contraband — I'm guessing LSD or a similar psychedelic — and is filled with Liam's street poetry.

A beatmaker, J.J. brings the duo into his studio, tucked away in a garage, turning them, with the help of multiplied controlled substances, into the original Irish rappers — not by nationality but language.

What ensues in kaleidoscopic fashion: Cheech-and-Chong-style drugged adventures (including a hallucinatory animated take of the trio performing on MDMA), shows in pubs and concert halls, Liam Og's sexed-up relationship with Protestant Georgia (Jessica Reynolds) that sets her police detective aunt (Josie Walker) after him and Kneecap, and stomping by the Radical Republicans Against Drugs.

Using the city of Belfast as almost another character — on the streets and in pubs, grimy apartments and everyday homes — "Kneecap" is visually arresting, as it captures the trio (with J.J. wearing a stocking mask on stage) in all their recklessness and charisma.

And it's powered by their hip-hop that blasts in at high volume and, even without reading along, is a perfect, compelling movie soundtrack.

A note on the sound front here: The Irish language scenes are subtitled, as they had to be. But the rappers-turned-actors' heavy Irish accents often make their English difficult to understand, especially during the music-drenched scenes.

That, however, doesn't derail "Kneecap" in the slightest. The trio prove to be naturals in front of the camera — maybe because they're not acting much at all — and their story is well-enough told that when it follows what becomes an expected arc it doesn't lose momentum or interest.

The political aspect of the film doesn't get a lot of run, but it does present the marches and meetings that, fueled in part by Kneecap, got the U.K. to grant Irish Gaelic as an official language in Ulster.

A final tip: don't leave the theater when the fictionalized film ends. There's a set of videos and photos that take the real-life Kneecap backward from a wild 2022 show to baby Naoise's baptism in a forest — a scene that opens what is an entertaining, exhilaratingly funny and dramatic, kind-of-true hip-hop biopic.