Now in theaters and worth seeking out, “Kneecap” joins a long list of musical biopics about how this or that artist/group/phenomenon got where they got. This one’s a rollicking, playfully serious success, a little messy but with enough juice and real moviemaking in it to spike its more familiar elements. “Familiar” is relative here.
The setting and story of the real-life three-man hip hop sensation Kneecap in Northern Ireland’s West Belfast doesn’t court a lot of immediate comparisons — though bits of “8 Mile,” “Straight Outta Compton” and the kinetic visual zap of “Trainspotting” inform writer-director Rich Peppiatt’s feature. In 2017, five years before the Gaelic language was recognized legally in the North of Ireland, Kneecap’s Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap, along with DJ Próvaí, unleashed a torrent of anti-British, anti-colonialist, pro-drug and pro-hedonism-in-general lyrics in unsuspecting venues, largely in that historically disallowed Irish tongue. The backdrop of “Kneecap,” inevitably, is the Emerald Isle’s political warfare and Belfast’s “Troubles” (ridiculous word, considering the size of the troubles) in particular.
The movie’s freely but creatively fictionalized version of events addresses the usual somber Belfast clichés in its opening seconds, jamming newsreel snippets of bombed buildings and exploding cars into a one-off quickie, just to get it out of the way. Director Peppiatt manages a shrewd balancing act th.