I don’t usually go out and watch biographies of musicians, because they tend to be so formulaic. In this case, I didn’t know its a real rap group, so I guess that kind of saved this for me. The movie actually makes fun of formulaic movies straight from the start. It begins with archive footage from the Troubles, including burning cars and unruly mobs (although I don’t want to disbarrage the people fighting for their freedom), but the narrator just stops that and tells us that every Irish movie that references the Troubles in any way always starts like this, but their story doesn’t.

Is this the only music biopic about an artist or a band that hadn’t even released an album before the movie?

When I saw this in the theater, there was only me and two Irish guys there. This is Lahti, Finland. You don’t see many Irish guys here (although we’ve had a couple as students in our English language business information technology program). One of them was in a worse position than me, because the movie is largely in Irish and the Finnish version had subtitles in only Finnish and Swedish, so they weren’t very helpful, but the lyrics are actually shown in English on the screen in a scrathed form, kind of like handwritten, so he wasn’t fully unaware of what’s going on. And movies are a visual art. You can understand a lot from context. I’ve seen multiple movies in languages I don’t understand and never felt like I’m out of the loop.

First, the rap group itself plays themselves. They are also credited writers. The marketing says that the story is mostly true, but of course, we don’t know what is actually true, although we can kind of guess.

The movie starts with (after the initial fakeout scene) with the father of Naoise teaching him and the narrator, Liam, the Irish language when they were kids. Ten years later, the father had reportedly died while being on the lamb, but we learn soon enough that he is just hiding. The two young men are dealing drugs and getting into trouble. One night Liam is arrested after an illegal rave. He claims to the police to be unable to speak English and thus the police require a translator. The police happen to find a music teacher to do the job (he teaches Irish on the side occasionally) and it turns out that the teacher wants to produce their music and thus the group is formed.

Admittedly, I don’t know how much this is about the band and their music, but all the the stats I could find point to the interest in Irish language being on the rise after the group was formed despite having been declining for about two centuries before that. It is completely possible that the interest is the cause and the band is the effect, but I still find the idea of a rap group being able to revive a dying language fascinating. And of course, if the band is the effect that they are also a part of a cycle.

However, while the topic of the langugage and thus the identity of a people, as well as the Troubles and their ongoing aftermath, are serious topics, this isn’t a serious movie. Its often joyous and always irreverent. There’s a lot of drugs and mishaps around them. Then there’s the music. It works. Its not the best hip hop out there, but its good and energetic in a way you don’t usually hear in this genre. It also works very well in the context of the movie. I wondered whether they wrote it for the movie, but based on their YouTube channel these were at least mostly existing tracks.

The band approaches things from a very aloof point of view which kind of clashes with the political aspects of the movie. At the same time, the band is political in the sense that they feel there are causes worth fighting for (Irish language, anti-colonialism and Irish Republicanism to start with), but they don’t approach these things from a dogmatic point of view. They make fun of various republican groups in the movie as well. I mean, most, if not all, political parties are shit. You just have to choose the one that suits your needs the best or, as Olurinatti puts it, the weakest enemy.

In the end, the movie is about the struggle to get Irish language officially recognized in Ireland, and it did just two years ago. I know many people feel these kinds of causes are not important, but they are. It’s about identity. If the Irish language dies, the imperial Brits have gained another victory and no-one in their right mind wants that.

Sadly, this movie will never be a hit, but I would hope this finds a way into popular consciousness, because it is a fun movie with a good point of view and approach to subjects I would like more people to be aware of. At no point is it preachy. There are no forced Oscar-moments here.

Here’s the biggest praise: I have raferenced this take by Lindsay Ellis multiple times on this blog, but it is very much appropriate here. She was talking about books, but that doesn’t matter. She said (paraphrasing) that the good books are the ones that make you want to read more… to which I would add just do something positive. In this case, based on the comments on various review sites, people want to go out and do something to protect their culture, so thus this is a great movie.