<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s rephrase the question slightly: Is the idea of watching Cillian Murphy unravel in spectacular, actorly fashion worth navigating a lot of sound and fury signifying next to nothing?<\/p>\n
There are a few different movies jockeying for screen time in Steve,<\/em> the British handwringer that drops on Netflix today, and yet one of them clearly has the best chance of winning its survival-of-the-fittest competition. You\u2019ve got the cluttered social-issues drama set in the mid-1990s, centered around an institution named Stanton Wood that seeks to help at-risk teens and is on the brink of having its funding cut. Our initial entry into this world is through a news crew, who\u2019ve shown up to do a human interest story; to call the intrusive reporter (Priyanga Burford) who asks in a clipped voice whether this isn\u2019t \u201can expensive dumping ground for society\u2019s waste product, a radical progressive educational intervention, a waiting room for [prison], or maybe\u2026 all of the above\u201d a caricature, or this mockumentary format clumsy, would be kind. Later, when a pompous parliamentary representative (The Thick of It<\/em>\u2018s Roger Allam) shows up for a photo op, you can feel an attempt at broader satire trying to worm its way through the muck as well.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Typically, the focus would be on the boys themselves, and to his credit, director Tim Mielants has assembled an impressively rowdy gaggle of up-and-coming actors to play all the young dudes. Some, like the volatile shit-stirrer Jamie (Luke Ayres), and Tarone (Tut Nyuot), a scrapper accused of assaulting a staff member, get fleshed out more than others. Even they\u2019re relegated to little more than supporting players and symbolic representations of troubled youth straight out of a BBC kitchen-sink passion play. Ironically, the student we do come to know the best is the one who\u2019s a tightly closed book: Shy (Jay Lycurgo, the film\u2019s secret weapon). He\u2019s the resident sensitive, ticking timebomb who drowns out the world with a constant, Walkman-enabled soundtrack of drum and bass. His name is well-earned, though hints of a violent past and the rage we witness him taking out on a chair suggests an inner turmoil destined to boil over into self-destruction.<\/p>\n None of these aforementioned media trolls, smarmy politicos or angry young men are called Steve, we should point out, and the fact that the movie and Cillian Murphy\u2019s school administrator share the same name reveals that the winner of this narrative battle royale is its central character study. Steve is several recognizable types in one. He\u2019s the sympathetic authority figure, the kind of Mr. Chips-style wonder teacher who tries to break through his student\u2019s tough-guy barriers and talk to them on their level. He\u2019s the voice of a viewer\u2019s frustration at society\u2019s inability to care for those that need it most, especially when he loses his cool at hearing Stanton Wood\u2019s benefactors announce they\u2019ve sold the property. And he\u2019s a total fucking mess, prone to popping pills, sneaking hard-liquor sips and the occasional Oxycodone coffee break.<\/p>\n In other words, Steve is a lot to play, and the Oscar-winner throws himself into every forlorn expression, every kindly mentoring session, every manic bit of rushing to and fro as chaos reigns around him, every stumbling step toward self-medicating into oblivion. Murphy tries to wring everything out of this showcase, in both his solo turns and his exchanges with Tracey Ullman\u2019s fellow supervisor and Emily Watson\u2019s in-house therapist. (There is, regrettably nothing on the level of the showstopping scene between Murphy and Watson in the director\u2019s previous, and far superior collaboration with these heavy hitters, 2024\u2019s Small Things Like These<\/em> \u2014 see that film if you haven\u2019t yet.) As he proved in Oppenheimer,<\/em> his silences can speak volumes, and some of Steve<\/em>\u2018s best moments simply involve you watching him think.<\/p>\n And yet, because the strain of being unable to help these poor kids and protecting them from tearing each other apart and trying to keep the lights on in this much-needed facility and ensuring his staff that they are safe from the instability their wards bring to the party is somehow not<\/em> enough, the movie feels the need to give him a trauma-drama backstory as well. It\u2019s handled in such a slapdash, klutzy manner, and feels so cut-rate, that you may find yourself raging alongside the movie\u2019s youngsters. Not even Murphy can sell it, and Steve<\/em> once again thrusts a version of that opening question in your face: Is watching a great actor suffer through a mediocre movie worth it? Your response may vary. We know our answer.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s rephrase the question slightly: Is the idea of watching Cillian Murphy unravel in spectacular, actorly fashion worth navigating a lot of sound and fury signifying next to nothing? There are a few different movies jockeying for screen time in Steve, the British handwringer that drops on Netflix today, and yet one of them clearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2066693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[40640,386397,361952,386398,363608,344374],"class_list":["post-2066692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-cillian-murphy","tag-human-interest-story","tag-priyanga-burford","tag-roger-allam","tag-stanton-wood","tag-tim-mielants"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Who-Wants-to-See-Cillian-Murphy-Have-a-Nervous-Breakdown.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2066692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2066694,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066692\/revisions\/2066694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2066693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2066692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2066692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2066692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}