Steve movie review: Cillian Murphy film is a hit and miss

Even in a school for teenage boys on wrong side of the law – who are just one misdemeanour away from jail and who are described by a TV crew member on camera as “society’s waste” – the pain eating away at Shy and his headteacher Steve stands out as palpable, throbbing, crying for help through their eyes.

However, that still is no answer to the question Shy asks. Which is what the problem is with Steve, a superbly acted film that is well-intentioned but also intentionless.

Based on a slim book called Shy by Max Porter, who has adapted the story for the film, its format of a day in the life of the Stanton Wood school doesn’t do justice to what it or its characters want to say. There is a lot bubbling inside each one of them, which we get only in flashes. One reason for that is the different ways their stories are revealed to us – whether it is the interactions between them, or the interactions between them and the teachers, or the interactions between them and a local TV station crew.

The crew is filming the school for a programme that is set to ask its readers to judge whether Stanton Wood is indeed a deserved “last chance” for its students, or a plain waste of taxpayers’ money.

The expenditure quoted is “30,000 pounds per student per year”. The year is 1996, and that does sound like a lot of money. In fact, this very day, Steve and his team of dedicated colleagues, including deputy head Amanda (Tracey Ullman) and counsellor Jenny (Emily Watson), have learnt that the trust which owns Stanton Wood has sold it, for being “spectacularly unsustainable”. The school hence is set to shut down very soon.

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The news has clearly shaken Steve, who sneaks around dipping into his stash of pills, painkillers and liquor in the school building. We are helpfully told that he survived a bad accident not too long ago.

The idea seems to be that just when Stanton Wood requires Steve to pull one of the many miracles he has till now, to assemble these boys all at one place, and keep them from murdering each other or someone else – even making them sit at the desk seems an achievement – Steve himself is coming apart.

It goes without saying that Murphy is in a class of his own as the troubled, tormented Steve – a role he has made his own. But the Irish actor also owns the scenes where he is required to be a friend/father figure to boys who don’t have good memories of either.

However, it is not Murphy who owns this film. It is his students, with their cuss words and violence, and their laughter and tempestuous energy. The standouts are Shy, whose large eyes in his disappearing frame scream of a childhood lost; and, on the other end of the spectrum, Jamie (Luke Ayres), all bulk and bluster but also acutely aware, with whom Steve has one of his most disarming heart-to-hearts.

There is a reason the book was called Shy, and making Steve the hero of this tale is, in that sense, amiss. A scene the teenager and his headteacher share towards the start of this horrific day, where the sun is shining, there is music in the air, Shy can smile and Steve can smile back, promises what could have been.

Steve movie director: Tim Mielants

Steve movie cast: Cillian Murphy, Tracey Ullman, Jay Lycurgo, Luke Ayres, Emily Watson

Steve movie rating: 3 stars