Steve Hands Cillian Murphy a Half-Baked Character Study

Part of the problem is that Steve drops a major plot turn in the middle of the film that seems designed to increase its tension but actually slackens it, making clear that the characters’ problems cannot be neatly solved by the next day’s sunrise. That’s often a clear point of movies structured over 24 hectic hours, but Steve calls that shot way too early. The decision might make more sense if the movie was the psychological portrait of its ostensible lead character indicated by the title. It is weirdly fun to see Murphy get to overact a little, dotting his typically understated manner with frustrated outbursts; he so rarely expresses genuine rage on screen that the novelty overrides any hamminess. The most egregious overacting of the movie doesn’t happen when Murphy is yelling, anyway; it happens when Mielants goes in for quavery extreme close-ups, self-consciously observing the toll the day’s events are taking on Steve – who is then appended with a late-breaking backstory that’s supposed to be revealing but instead is gallingly tacked on.

It’s easy to picture these details coming together more cleanly on the page, where the story began as a novella called Shy, self-adapted here by author Max Porter. Shy is the name of one of Steve’s students, well-played by Jay Lycurgo, who is less ostentatious than most of his classmates as he quietly suffers from mental health challenges and, early on, a heartbreaking scene where his parents cut off all contact with him. Apparently the novella gets right into Shy’s head over the course of a few hours, which probably would have been difficult to translate to the screen. But the optics of retitling a story originally told from a young Black man’s point of view to refocus on his white teacher are almost parodic, while doing plenty of work to explain why Steve doesn’t quite land as a character study of either character. Its attention keeps drifting to Shy and the other students – understandably, because the ensemble of young performers has chemistry, charisma, and humor to spare, even when they’re acting out. Then the movie will circle back to Steve, leaving the audience to wonder why certain information about him is so firmly withheld, or simply why he doesn’t share more scenes with his young charges.

The movie is encapsulated in one bravura, pointless shot. While the faculty meets indoors, the young students play soccer on a field outside. The camera captures both groups by circling the field, sailing through open windows, heading back outside, flipping upside down, and performing all kinds of acrobatics that are either virtually assisted, an enormous practical challenge, or, most likely, both. It goes on for ages, a wonder behold on two levels: the wild stylistic swing, and the complete lack of motivation for it at this particular moment. It breaks up the monotony of handheld camerawork to tell us almost nothing about any of the characters or their lives. As with the rest of the film, the longer it goes on, the more inscrutable its purpose becomes.

Director: Tim Mielants
Writer: Max Porter
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Tracey Ullman, Jay Lycurgo, Simbi Ajikawo, Luke Ayres, Emily Watson
Release Date: September 19, 2025 (theaters); October 3, 2025 (Netflix)

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.