Steve (15)

Reteaming with Small Things Like These director Tim Mielants, Cillian Murphy plays a desperate reform school teacher opposite a rowdy ensemble of totally convincing young actors.

Murphy is Steve, a stressed, troubled but passionately committed headteacher with a secret alcohol and substance abuse problem, in charge of a residential reform school for delinquent teenage boys. With his staff – deputy (Tracey Ullman), therapist-counsellor (Emily Watson) and a new teacher (Little Simz) – he has to somehow keep order in the permanent bedlam of fights and maybe even teach them something. Then there’s Shy (Jay Lycurgo), the quietest and smartest pupil.

Steve has invited a documentary film crew inside the controversial institution. There’s a sense of dread from the get-go, but these outsiders’ video cameras lend another level of verisimilitude to an unsentimental depiction of a dozen or so teens who could, it’s clear, rip one another to shreds. In parallel with this calamity, Shy gets a call from his mother and stepfather, saying that they wish to have nothing more to do with him.

Murphy – post Oppenheimer Oscar glory – continues to pick interesting, smaller, but no-less challenging roles. This is no different. A must-see.