Deranged captivity thriller Heel lets Stephen Graham present an alternative solution for Adolescence
Courtesy Magnolia Pictures
Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa is quickly rising in the ranks as one of our favorite weird little guys. His work on last year’s Anniversary was perhaps our favorite take on the frustratingly obvious encroachment of fascism into modern America, and his 2020 flick Hater (originally “Sala samobójców. Hejter”) should’ve gotten a better footing in America, had a tale of social media-fueled fake news not released days before the COVID-19 pandemic. It is no surprise that he hits it outta the park again here, with a tale that finds some very dark humor amid disgust and frustration.
Heel (alternatively titled Good Boy outside of the U.S.) follows 19-year-old hooligan Tommy (Anson Boon), who revels in a life of drugs, parties, and violence. One night, on a bender with his reckless friends, he becomes separated from the group and is abducted by an unknown figure.
Though he is no stranger to inflicting violence, he is enraged and horrified when he wakes to find himself chained in the basement of the isolated suburban family home of Chris (Stephen Graham), his wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and their young son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). The family sets out to reform Tommy’s unruly behavior, forcing him to comply with their relentless mind games or seek escape at any cost.
What could have been played as a traditional kidnapping/torture scenario in lesser hands is elevated into a far more uncanny space by a set of delicately menacing performances. The always commanding Graham plays a head-of-house who leads each new form of punishment from a (sincere?) place of attempting to reform a lost soul. And 19-year-old Tommy is more than lost—he’s not just a 24-hour party guy, but his social media presence is nothing but violence and trauma inflicted on strangers, day in and day out. As a wild dog, the idea of bringing him to heel is more generous than sending him to a farm upstate.
After his award-winning run on Adolescence as a dad who was unaware of what the world had twisted about his own son, Graham here flips the approach. Instead of the father who can’t believe that he couldn’t do better, he’s now attempting brutal proactive parenting—even if it does yield some blend of Saw and A Clockwork Orange tactics. Or at least it does at first. Heel evolves into a beast all its own, that meshes chaotic knashing of teeth with a twisted sincerity that takes the story far, far beyond expected genre fare.
Heel is on VOD and in theaters now.
