Kneecap
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: August 2, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
NMEAndrew TrendellAug 2, 2024
Just like their insane live shows and debut album ‘Fine Art’, it’s one hell of a laugh. However it’s also full of heart; telling a real working class story as a call for unity without punching down or patronising. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussJul 29, 2024
In the end, though, “Kneecap” is a dramatically well-structured tale of cultural and personal reclamation – done in the cheekiest, craic-talking way imaginable. It’s as if “The Commitments” had a bastard child with “The Crying Game,” and it mutated into its own, magnificently defiant thing. Read full review
100
Original-CinThom ErnstJul 29, 2024
Kneecap is one of the most likeable films this year. Turn up the volume and enjoy. Read full review
91
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonJan 31, 2024
Rich Peppiatt’s feature debut spins the freewheeling cinematic language of Edgar Wright and Guy Ritchie into a fun, heartwarming, and suitably raunchy celebration of the Irish language. Read full review
90
Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanAug 21, 2024
The humour is merciless. Read full review
90
VarietyCarlos AguilarJan 26, 2024
Bursting with unruly energy that practically escapes the confines of the screen, Kneecap is a riotous, drug-laced triumph in the name of freedom that bridges political substance and crowd-pleasing entertainment. Read full review
90
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganJan 23, 2024
The funniest thing to come out of Belfast since [fill in the blank if you can], Kneecap is a riot which strains let’s-form-a-band film tropes (they’re the ‘shit Beatles’ via The Commitments), stirs in some Monty Python, sucks up the Young Offenders in all its shell-suited glory and blows it out at audiences in a blast of two-fingered audaciity. Read full review
89
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzAug 1, 2024
The new comedy Kneecap is a riotous delight that will have even the most staid audiences ready to flip the bird. Read full review
89
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiJan 19, 2024
An audacious film that completely obliterates the expectations of the musical biopic genre. Read full review
88
Washington PostTy BurrAug 1, 2024
In “Kneecap,” a frenetic, funny, searingly angry film from Northern Ireland, language — Irish Gaelic — serves as an active force of rebellion channeled through the beats and braggadocio of African American rap. Very little gets lost in the translation. Read full review
88
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJul 29, 2024
Fueled by driving beats, irreverent humor and stylish direction from first-timer Rich Peppiatt, it plays like an edgier, modern-day answer to 1991’s similarly rousing “The Commitments,” just with Irish-language rap standing in for American R&B. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyAug 23, 2024
It’s a film that not only signals a major musical arrival, but ends up feeling a lot bigger than the conventional (and often confining) boundaries of the “music biopic”. Read full review
80
The TelegraphEd PowerAug 22, 2024
Most impressively of all, Peppiatt captures the raw power of a great rap song. Hard-punching and cheerfully riotous, the film directs a well-placed kick at the nether regions to anyone who insists music, politics and cinema cannot mix. Read full review
80
Total FilmKevin HarleyAug 20, 2024
Underpinned by themes of language and identity, writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s rude, raucous film remixes music-movie clichés to Kneecap’s rebel tune with galvanizing verve. Tearing straight outta Belfast on barrelling beats, Kenneth Branagh it ain’t. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerAug 19, 2024
Having the mordant wit and tonal confidence to parlay The Troubles into a punchline, Kneecap has laughs, smarts and verve to spare. Get on board or, as the characters put it, fuck up. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleAug 5, 2024
Every Irish speaker in Kneecap wants to be seen, felt and heard in their fight for freedom. That funny, funky riot of attention-seeking pain and pleasure, inspired by the pioneering voices of American hip-hop, makes for a bracing, entertaining transatlantic dispatch. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicDina KaurAug 2, 2024
Do I wish I saw more of Fassbender on my screen? Of course. Does it almost not even matter because the main three actors/musicians carry the movie so well? Also yes. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenAug 1, 2024
Can a movie leave you with a comedown? If it’s as raucous and unruly as Kneecap, a nonstop blizzard of beats, bumps of white powder and punky defiance of the British and Belfast’s sectarian past, the answer’s a firm ‘yes’. Read full review
80
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 2, 2024
Kneecap is a film that shifts expectations. It’s chaotic in the best way, alive with buzzing energy and resistance. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinJan 23, 2024
There is a fair number of gags and wisecracks that will go over the head of many viewers not steeped in the local lore, argot and history. But the film’s infectious energy, use of in-camera effects, animation and all manner of jiggery pokery is as mesmerizing and giddy as it was when Danny Boyle used many of the same tricks for Trainspotting. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeJan 19, 2024
Never mind the plot. Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, a former journalist who created the salty 2014 satire One Rogue Reporter, Kneecap works best as a collage of digs at contemporary Northern/North of Ireland woven in with a touching treatise on why the Irish language matters. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 7, 2024
If Kneecap has a somewhat pushy sense of broad comedy or, in the final third, some predictable dramatic beats, its visual invention wins the day, because it’s so comfortably allied with the songs of protest and release. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyAug 2, 2024
Kneecap is “about” a lot of things, and its pace makes it impossible to resist getting swept up in it. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineDerek SmithJan 29, 2024
Much of Rich Peppiatt’s film isn’t about respectability, but rather debasement, and sugar-coating Kneecap’s widespread antics isn’t on the menu. Read full review
75
The PlaylistMarshall ShafferJan 25, 2024
The film captures the what of Kneecap but also the why, which makes all the difference. Read full review
75
IndieWireAdam SolomonsJan 23, 2024
A sharp and well-made comedy with a better drama glued on the side. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerAug 1, 2024
Dipping between English and Irish, and borrowing wholeheartedly from the fictional music doc/concert format of A Hard Day’s Night (hey, steal from the best), stylish musical comedy-drama Kneecap the movie is an accurate-ish biopic of the real Kneecap, with Dochartaigh, Annaidh, and Cairealláin playing themselves. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 22, 2024
The film really comes to life in the actual hip-hop scenes; the musical sequences have originality, comedy and freedom. The rest of the time, the film looks worryingly like a late 90s-early 00s cool Britannia geezer-gangster romp. Read full review
60
The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaAug 1, 2024
The film, as a result, feels wildly uneven, though it cruises on the strength of its underdog narrative and its weird, sordid touches. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearJul 31, 2024
In a genre that runs the gamut from A Hard Day’s Night to Can’t Stop the Music, filmmaker Rich Peppiatt’s gonzo take on the band’s story — titled, simply, Kneecap — falls somewhere between those two markers of quality; the group may be groundbreaking, but this recounting of their struggle to achieve fame, glory, and inhuman levels of intoxication sticks to an extremely familiar template. Read full review
60
ColliderChase HutchinsonJan 23, 2024
After pushing up against the confines of a conventional musical biopic, it does end up mostly operating within them, hitting all the notes you’d expect it to hit, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring mostly true when it counts. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonAug 1, 2024
It runs out of story about midway through, and spends more time attempting to make these guys look cool than showing us the importance of their acts of linguistic civil disobedience. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubJacob OllerJul 31, 2024
Writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s film has a harder time connecting its stylish music video silliness with drama that meanders and a political message that repeats like it’s stuck on a cheap turntable. Read full review
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