Of human bondage: Funny ‘Heel’ an oddball delight
Tough love gets taken to the extreme in the darkly funny “Heel,” a morally complex fairytale predicated on the simple premise of an out-of-control, teenage hooligan being snatched off the street and chained in a basement of a rural cottage until submitting to the violent, dehumanizing tactics of his bizarro captor.
Sounds kinky, right? It’s not. If anything, it proves surprisingly moving. But please do not attempt it at home. You’d no doubt be arrested. Not so, for Chris (“Adolescence’s” Stephen Graham), who by all appearances is a diminutive but headstrong psycho intent on conducting an obedience school for humans. His first victim, er student, is Anson Boon’s Tommy, a foul-mouthed brute we spend the opening moments of the movie observing as he rampages his way through debauched London nightlife, guzzling drinks, snorting coke, cheating on his girl, and punching a bouncer in the face.
It’s at the completion of one of these nightly revels that a severely inebriated Tommy gets separated from his posse. And the next thing he knows, he awakens in a cellar with his neck in a steel dog collar attached to a chain just long enough for him to reach his pee jar. Fiesty that he is, Tommy tries everything he can to break loose, but to no avail.
Naturally, visions of “The Silence of the Lambs” start dancing inside your head as you assess the level of depravity the genial and always-smiling Chris is capable of. But wait. He isn’t the sick fuck we think this topee-sporting jailer to be. He’s not homicidal at all, just deranged. Maybe even a tad benevolent. Well, at least he is, as long as Tommy behaves like a good dog. If he starts barking, out comes the whip and taser.
Even more shocking, Chris’s weird wife, Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough) and doe-eyed, prepubescent son, Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), are also all in on Dad’s demented little experiment, which, to their mild surprise, begins to yield dividends. Or, does it? Might Tommy just be playing possum while patiently waiting for his chance to break loose and exact revenge?
That’s the powerful source of suspense palpably racing through almost every second of “Heel,” the innovative creation of writers Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, a couple of Polish rookies who had the good fortune of capturing the attention of director Jan Komasa. You might recall the latter as the helmer of the twin masterpieces, “Warsaw Uprising” and the Oscar-nominated “Corpus Christi,” films that share a common trait with “Heel.” And that would be the thirst for freedom, at any cost.
Of Komasa’s previous works, “Heel” most closely resembles “Corpus Christi,” which also featured a young delinquent who finds unexpected salvation while waging a battle for self-survival. In the latter, it was an escaped con masquerading as a priest, a job that quickly taught the protagonist the meaning of healing and compassion. And here, it’s another angry young man learning the joys of being exposed to a clan that may be at an “Addams Family” level of freaky, but also one that loves and cares for each other.
Don’t, however, get the idea that “Heel” is sappy and sentimental. It’s most definitely not. It’s cruel and cringingly violent in places. But it’s also livened with a thick vein of black humor rooted in the absurdity of the situation. You subscribe to it as readily as you attempt to discern the unspoken goals and motivations rumbling around inside the slightly warped heads of Chris and Tommy.
Our conduit into this intriguing conundrum is the family’s part-time housekeeper, Rina (Monika Frajczyk), a Macedonian refugee who thinks it odd that her employer has a teenager imprisoned in his basement, but she says nothing, partly due to an NDA, but more out of fear of drawing attention to herself and her own issues. It’s never stated, but you suspect she’s escaped from human traffickers (yet another sort of imprisonment) who might be stalking her. And for Chris, the metaphoric restraints are the ghost of a person named Charlie. Was he a son who met an unfortunate demise? Or, another boy like Tommy, whose confinement didn’t end well?
I like that the mystery is never solved. It forces us to use our imaginations and ponder Chris’s endgame. In the meantime, you bask in the warmth of watching Tommy discover something foreign to him – family. He’s never had a proper one, unless you count his neglectful single mom. But when in the company of Chris, Kathryn and Jonathan, he experiences a kind of togetherness that gradually tames the wild beast within.
It also presents Komasa with ample opportunity to indulge in the lunacy of Tommy being cloriformed and swept off to the country for a picnic on his birthday. Or, much more poignantly, sitting shackled in a living room chair, munching popcorn while watching “Kez,” the 1969 Ken Loach flick. In it, an abused boy undergoes an existential awakening when he captures a falcon and trains the wild thing to be his pet, a plot that very much mirrors Tommy’s current plight, in which he’s both the lad and the domesticated bird.
There are dozens of similarly clever touches that render “Heel” what I believe to be 2026’s best film to date, from its vast originality to its sharp writing and even better performances by the five principal actors. Graham, a three-time Emmy winner, and Riseborough, a past Oscar nominee, are givens when it comes to supplying superb performances. But the level of work the charismatic Boon delivers is most impressive. He also has the hardest task: rendering Tommy’s gradual transformation, both subtle and believable. He succeeds marvelously at each.
It’s also a welcome comeback for Komasa, who stumbled a bit with last autumn’s “The Anniversary,” his first English-language production. But he’s fully redeemed by “Heel,” a movie that’s about as unorthodox as they come, yet so down to earth with its twisted twist on teaching an obstreperous pup new tricks. It’s sure to set tongues and tails wagging.
Movie review
Heel
Rated: Not rated
Cast: Stephen Graham, Anson Boon, Andrea Riseborough, Kit Rakusen and Monika Frajczyk
Director: Jan Komasa
Writers: Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid
Runtime: 110 minutes
Where: In theaters March 6 (limited)
Grade: A-
