Steve may not be the movie you’d expect, as it certainly wasn’t what I anticipated.
An exciting element of film festivals is seeing movies before the barrage of trailers, talk show appearances, character posters, and all other manner of spoiler-y promotions. So, for a critic planning their screening schedule, you’re piecing together few clues.
Not familiar with the best-selling novella on which Steve is based, I expected a tearjerking drama that may well leave me rattled and heart-aching, like RaMell Ross’ soul-scorching Nickel Boys. After all, Steve is not only a drama set a reform school, but also a film starring Murphy, who has played a long line of intense characters facing horrid circumstances, from zombies (26 Days Later), to a dying sun (Sunshine), to a world at war (Oppenheimer). Plus, Murphy and Mielants’ last movie together was Small Things like These, a harrowing tale of the sins committed and covered up by an Irish convent.
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