Review: 'Kneecap' is a messy comedy that provides a faked origin story for an Irish hip-hop trio.

The raucous, raunchy “Kneecap” has difficulty settling on what it wants to be — profane drug comedy, sexy romance, family melodrama, political diatribe about Northern Ireland — but, along the way, it’s a rather funny and nicely offensive look at young punks in modern Belfast.

Writer-director Rich Peppiatt devises a fictionalized origin story for a Belfast hip-hop group, called Kneecap. It starts in 2019, with two teens who call themselves “low-life scum,” Naoise Ó Cairealláin (who goes by Móglaí Bap) and  Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh (aka Mo Chara). They spend their days selling MDMA and cocaine, and trying to dodge “the peelers” (their Irish-language name for the British police) and the paramilitary Radical Republicans Against Drugs that aims to drive away the drug trade. 

When Liam Óg gets arrested, he messes with the cops by talking only in Irish.. The police get JJ (JJ Ó Dochartaigh), a high school music teacher who speaks Irish, to act as a translator. JJ gets hold of Liam Óg’s notebook and sees the rap rhymes inside — most of them written in Irish. JJ convinces Liam Óg and Naoise to record those rhymes in the studio in his garage, and after much consumption of drugs, they make some tracks. 

The next step is to perform live, which means finding a willing venue (giving hashish to a pub owner helps) and letting JJ wear a balaclava and taking the name DJ Próvai so his school doesn’t learn of his side gig. 

Each of the lads has personal subplots. Liam Og has a stormy, but sex-filled, relationship with Georgia (Jessica Reynolds), who’s British and is of two minds about songs that treat the British as an occupying army. Naiose is dealing with his mom (Simone Kirby), how hasn’t left the house since Naiose’s car-bombing father (Michael Fassbender) faked his death and went underground a decade ago. And JJ’s wife, Caitlin (Fionnula Flaherty), is deeply involved in a public campaign in support of a law in the Northern Ireland parliament to recognize and protect the Irish language.

Peppiatt’s directing gets a little rough going around the turns of the overstuffed plot. But when the movie is focused on the raw energy of Kneecap’s raps, and the sheer defiance of speaking one’s indigenous language, the emotion hits hard.

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‘Kneecap’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 2, in several Utah theaters. Rated R for pervasive drug content and language, sexual content/nudity and some violence. Running time: 105 minutes; in English and Irish with subtitles.