Steve
There’s something mesmerising about watching a man hold chaos together with little more than nerves and nicotine. After the quiet conviction of Small Things Like These, Cillian Murphy returns with something far louder: a headmaster coming apart in real time, caught between duty, chaos, and his own habits.
Murphy’s Steve, a reform school head in the mid-‘90s, is brilliant at everything except coping. He lectures on control while losing his own, surrounded by boys who reflect his disorder in sharper, louder tones. When a TV crew arrives to film the school’s “success” the whole façade buckles.
Equal parts bedlam and heartbreak, Steve finds rough poetry in failure. It's loud, jagged, and occasionally tender—a film that knows redemption is messy, that sometimes the lesson is simply surviving the day.
Murphy’s Steve, a reform school head in the mid-‘90s, is brilliant at everything except coping. He lectures on control while losing his own, surrounded by boys who reflect his disorder in sharper, louder tones. When a TV crew arrives to film the school’s “success” the whole façade buckles.
Equal parts bedlam and heartbreak, Steve finds rough poetry in failure. It's loud, jagged, and occasionally tender—a film that knows redemption is messy, that sometimes the lesson is simply surviving the day.
Mini Review: After the quiet conviction of Small Things Like These, Cillian Murphy returns with something far louder. As a reform school head unravelling in real time, he’s brilliant at everything except coping. Steve is darkly funny, chaotic, and deeply human—a story that finds rough poetry in failure and grace in the small act of getting through the day.
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