Steve (2025)

Cillian Murphy once more proves he's not just interested in big blockbuster pieces with this small, minimalist- yet explosive- adaptation of Max Porter's novel Shy. This shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone familiar with Murphy's work- especially his early output- yet it's easy now that he's an Oscar winner for everyone to assume he'll be up for every major role going.

Steve focuses on Murphy's titular headmaster of a reform school, spread over one twenty-four hour period in which a film crew turn up to document a day in the life of the troublesome students, and try to find answers as to why Steve and his colleagues would want to spend their time trying to help these young men when the rest of society has cast them aside- in some cases their own families.

Murphy co-produces and once more works with director Tim Mielants, after the pair combined to such powerful effect with the adaptation of the Claire Keegan novel Small Things Like These last year. For Steve, Max Porter has adapted his own novel into a screenplay, but crucially switches the focus from a student, Shy (who is still a key feature of this film) to headteacher Steve, a man who clearly loves his job but is constantly under a huge amount of pressure to the point where we see him frequently dash for hidden medication throughout an extremely trying day.

To make matters worse, we discover early on that the school is to close in six months as the building has been sold- a case of a decision being made higher up from people who don't know or particularly care about the intricate details of the work being done by Steve and his staff- and sure as hell aren't bothered about the potential revival of young men in a place described in an early scene as "one step away from a borstal".

Murphy is excellent, as you might expect but he's so good you barely register who's playing Steve- you completely believe in the character as well as Steve's own belief in what he's trying to do here. For any teacher who works in a trying school with what might be referred to as 'troubled' kids, there's a lot to relate to here. This is a film that shows the importance of treating every child individually and working backwards in terms of figuring out why they behave in the way they do- and trying to find solutions that give them a future, instead of dismissing them as lost causes or hopeless cases. Often their own parents make the situation worse, although that's something not explored too much in Mielants' film.

It's frequently a hard watch, both from the point of view of the young students themselves and the teachers- Emily Watson provides fine work as a student therapist and Little Simz is terrific as a new teacher- but it's Murphy's film, and he's utterly compelling as a man who knows he's doing the right thing but feels the weight of the world on his shoulders in trying to do it. His relationship with the kids (especially a terrific Jay Lycurgo as Shy) is the center of the film and gives it its heart.

It doesn't all work, there are some suggestions of magical realism and some tracking shots in the last few scenes that don't appear to inject anything into the narrative rather than to give a wider view of what exactly is going on in that given moment. And the film is slight- at only ninety minutes you wish that there had been more to sink your teeth into in terms of fully fleshing out each student's backstory- the decision to switch the central focus from Shy to Steve for a cinematic adaption works well, but it also hints at a potentially longer film in which we might have felt the full force of the decisions made narratively across all of the students themselves. It's understandable why that decision was made to focus more on Steve, but it leaves you wondering.

But that perhaps discredits a fine piece of work from Mielants- with a truly fantastic helping hand from Cillian Murphy; and great credit must go to Porter for a very effective adaptation of his own source. Steve, just like pretty much anything Murphy gets his hands on, is well worth your time. 7.9/10