Since winning the best actor Oscar for Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy has opted to work twice with Belgian director Tim Mielants, first with well-received 2024 historical drama Small Things Like These, and now with Netflix drama Steve. Which is to say, one of the pound-for-pound best working actors shifted from the most macro of all macrodramas to, well, small things like these – although Steve finds him playing a similarly tormented character, the drug-addicted headmaster of a school for troubled teenage boys. Unsurprisingly, it’s one of the year’s standout performances, which helps sturdy an otherwise shaky film.
The Gist: Daily life at Stanton Wood boarding school is chaotic enough, but this day is especially amplified: A TV-news crew is on campus for a special-interest piece. A representative from Parliament visits to speak to a class. And headmaster Steve (Murphy) is blindsided with bad news – more on that in a moment. We first see him sitting down for an interview with the reporters, and he’s fidgety, his eyes glassy. He’s clearly squashing whatever’s bothering him and trying to maintain an aura of calm collectedness. “Tell us a bit about Stanton Wood,” the reporter requests, but instead of hearing an answer, we bear witness to the day’s events leading to this moment, and they speak volumes. It’s 1996.
On his way to school, Steve picks up Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a relatively withdrawn student who rarely ceases listening to hard techno on his walkman. Steve walks into the building and immediately breaks up a fight between students. The days at Stanton Wood are frequently punctuated with bursts of violence, some of which are tolerated as jovial roughhousing, although that can easily spill over into malevolence – the challenge for teachers and staff is to know the difference. The school is described, usually by outsiders, and especially the reporters on the grounds today, with terms like “last chance,” “dumping ground” and “paid for directly out of taxpayers’ pockets.” It’s gross understatement to call the students “demonstrative.” They’re rude, brash, funny, endlessly energetic, confrontational and far smarter than our prejudices might allow. Some have committed serious violent offenses; on this day, Steve will pull aside a student for sexually assaulting a teacher, an act that gets far more leeway at Stanton Wood than it would in any other part of society. It’s part of the job. It goes with the territory. The school’s goal is rehabilitation, or, as the reporter indelicately puts it, to “turn rotten apples into viable fruit.” The boys’ other options are far more grim and punitive.
One trope of the news crew is to ask each interviewee to describe themselves in three words. Shy calls himself “depressed, angry and bored.” Earlier that day, his mother called him and said she was done with him, for good, no more chances, that’s it, and of course, he’s crushed. Shy cycles in and out of scenes as Steve and his staff – among them teachers Shola (Simbi Ajakawo) and Amanda (Tracey Ullman) and counselor Jenny (Emily Watson) – tame the wildness just enough to get these boys to learn something. To an outsider it looks like herding cats, but they know how to get through to these boys, to communicate with them in terms they understand. It takes 100 percent of themselves but they’re committed. Compare that to how the news crew shows little respect for their privacy, or how the government rep condescends to them, prompting a righteous insulting retort from Shy, an instance of vulgarity that’s actually, well, correct, even considering the context. Meanwhile, Steve breathlessly scampers from one room and conflict to the next and the next and the next, putting out fires or self-medicating with pills, a bottle of oxycodone hidden in the laundry room, or glasses of wine. One meeting finds the property owners dropping the news that the school has been sold and will shut down in six months. All this work, all this sacrifice, all this endless trouble, and for what?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Steve blends the troubled-teen school of Short Term 12 with the substance-abusing teacher – and gritty, handheld-camera style – of Half Nelson.
Performance Worth Watching: Of course Murphy does stellar work here, subtly expressing Steve’s barely veiled desperation, something that parallels the experiences of the boys in the school – and it can be argued whether this dynamic makes their experience better or worse. But don’t overlook Lycurgo, who works wonders with limited screen time, and is the functional heart of the film.
Memorable Dialogue: Steve is asked to describe himself in three words: “Very, very tired.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Be grateful Steve is only 93 minutes long – two more minutes would feel like far too much. This is an exhausting film, calculated for maximum intensity for better or worse; Mielants’ camera barely ever stops moving, often thrashing wildly and essentially mirroring the psychological state of his protagonist. Add that to the pile-it-on contrivances of the plot – I have questions about why Steve and his cohorts would agree to give journalists so much access – and it begins to feel like a bit much, even as we’re immersed in the setting and engrossed in the drama. This is as anarchic a 24 hours as one could conceive in something that isn’t a big-spectacle disaster movie.
Mielants’ breakneck pace and admirable, but distracting virtuoso flourishes result in an amplified reality that tests our suspension of disbelief. And his choice to shift focus from the source material is curious – Max Porter’s novella Shy told the story from the title character’s point-of-view, a young person of color trying to calm his mind and find his place in this world, and this a/v adaptation, as the movie title implies, reorients the drama as the White middle-class headmaster’s struggle. Sometimes, the film wavers between the two perspectives with enough uncertainty, it keeps us hyper-alert and off balance, again, for better or worse. But core ideas about the nature of tough love, rehabilitation and general kindness and understanding – the notion of adapting to the rhythms of the students’ lives and behaviors instead of forcing compliance feels quietly revolutionary – shine through the melee, and it’s hard not to glean insight from this turbulent story.
Our Call: Steve is a flawed but passionate and dramatically solvent slice of gritty neo-realism. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.