Christopher Rhoten
The title of this review might seem a little clickbait, but I imagine that director Jan Komasa would approve of the comparison. Heel (originally titled Good Boy, before Ben Leonberg’s film of the same name forced a change last year) features no less than two scenes in which a man forces his imprisoned “son” to rewatch his raucous TikToks on a TV. Every teenager’s worst nightmare.
Let’s back up a bit. The “son” is nineteen-year-old Tommy (Anson Boon), a good-looking English twerp who verges on sociopathic. The film opens with him partying hard one night in the city, partaking in both drugs and alcohol, picking fights with security guards, and cheating on his girlfriend right in front of her. (It feels right when we later find out he’s racist, too.) While wandering the streets in a drunken stupor, Tommy is abruptly captured and put to sleep. When he awakes, he realizes that he’s been taken prisoner by the eccentric couple Chris and Kathryn (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough), who have chained him up in their cellar. Their goal: to rehabilitate Tommy and turn him into a functioning member of society, and maybe turn him on to some good literature along the way.
A Clockwork Orange riff, to be sure, but one more personal than institutional. Chris is awkward and a control freak, but his intentions are pure. Early on, Tommy erupts in an obscene tirade, graphically describing the many ways he will seek vengeance on the couple once he’s free. Chris mercilessly beats him with a stick, shouting “Bad boy!” as he angrily retaliates. Not only does he cry afterward, but he also brings his surrogate son-cum-prisoner a treat. This strange dynamic is what gives Heel its black humor. It’s there again when Chris instructs a maid that all cleaning products must be eco-friendly, non-toxic, and chemical-free, before handing her pepper spray and a taser to defend against pushback from Tommy.
Heel’s screenplay, written by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, hopes you find it a little difficult to pick a side. “I’m the bloody victim here!” screams Tommy. “That’s the problem with your generation,” Chris tells him. “You always tend to gravitate towards some kind of victimhood.” Tommy’s captors demand conformity, though their demands are not particularly stringent given the nature of his crimes. The aforementioned TikToks (that Chris has somehow transferred to VHS) demonstrate callousness even greater than that of the opening scene, such as Tommy burning a kid with a cigarette. Total freedom can be a prison as well. We quickly realize that Chris and Kathryn’s strict yet loving discipline isn’t all that far from many parents in the real world—the kicker being that this isn’t their son.
Does it matter? Inevitably, Tommy does begin to respect his captors, and the line between kidnapped and kin begins to blur. He bonds with their actual son, the straight-laced Jonathan, and inadvertently helps Chris spice up his marriage. There’s even a sequence where the family celebrates Tommy’s birthday by drugging and transporting him to a cookout in the countryside. What a heartwarming scene—and not a phone in sight! Make no mistake, this Stockholm Syndrome runs both ways: during an unsettling scene where Kathryn disciplines Jonathan, she tells him to “destroy what destroys you,” cluing us in to a particular emotion that may have driven the couple to kidnap Tommy.
Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Komasa is not interested in playing with expectations, and the Polish director’s English-language debut does not pretend to be a straightforward thriller for long. Heel is blackly comedic and subtly stylish, but it’s mostly a family drama, exploring nature and nurture as well as just how effective locking someone in their room can be. The family sits down to watch Ken Loach’s Kes, at one point, bringing a tear to Tommy’s eye. Perhaps a reminder that he is the falcon in this scenario. “We treat people with respect in this house,” warns Chris early on. While horrific, is Tommy not being treated with the respect he deserves?
Well, no. But later scenes will leave you unsure what’s good and bad or right and wrong anymore, and in that sense, Komasa has done justice to the premise. We all expect that going in, obviously—what makes so many of these films average is that there is, oftentimes, a nugget of golden provocation in the last five minutes, but also 90 minutes of repetition and overt foreshadowing to be waded through first. While Heel is guilty of both, it also knows that juicy performances are what keep the audience from making a run for the exit themselves.
With Graham and Riseborough to keep us company, Heel is consistently watchable: Graham perfectly channels the neurosis of a man who equates smoking with the fall of Western civilization, and the ever-reliable Riseborough, long a telltale sign of a solid flick, floats through the house like a ghost before cutting through the fog with her warm smile. Boon, too, proves both charming and sympathetic. It’s the ending that risks leaving a bad taste, as Komasa fully embraces the twisted instincts of the script.
Heel is a uniquely ambidextrous study of the found family trope, shining light on the thin line between love and tyranny while feeding the push-and-pull of taking sides, all without ever forgetting the scene that came before it (and yes, we’re still discussing the film about kidnapping a teenager). Though comparable to early Yorgos Lanthimos, Heel tempers its shocking cruelty by focusing on the stellar performances that hold its unique family together. This is a black dramedy that has a heart, too, in its own wicked way.
