If you were a streaming service, let alone one of the best streamers on the market, and you could pick one actor to work with and front a movie coming to your platform this year, there’s a good chance you’d have Cillian Murphy on your shortlist. After all, he’s only recently been crowned with an Oscar, and his career seems to be going from strength to strength.
So, you’d imagine that Netflix is feeling pretty smug about Steve, which just got a proper trailer at last, and will feature Murphy in the starring role as the struggling headmaster of a school for troubled youths in mid-90s England. Over the course of one pivotal day, we’ll learn a lot more about Steve (Murphy) and his many pupils, few of whom seem straightforward.
From the looks of the trailer, things are going to get pretty intense and emotional, too. Murphy’s role as Steve is clearly one that will have him displaying as much empathy for his complicated pupils as he can muster, but as the trailer goes on it seems clearer and clearer that he’s reaching the end of his tether.
What exactly will happen, and whether there’ll be a practical crisis to match the heightened emotions, isn’t clear to me – I haven’t read the source novel, Max Porter’s bestseller Shy. Still, I’ve every confidence that Murphy will rise to the occasion, alongside Emily Wilson in a supporting role.
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The other stars of the movie, meanwhile, look like a series of newcomers playing the so-called “troubled” students that Steve’s in charge of. They look diverse and impassioned, and I hope that we see some of them go on to great things, using this as quite a high-profile springboard.
Netflix is clearly confident in the movie (with good reason). It’s already confirmed that it’ll get a cinema release, starting on 19 September, before it hits the streaming platform itself on 3 October. That means there isn’t long to wait, especially if you’re happy to skip the delay for streaming and see it on the big screen.
