Cillian Murphy in Netflix Reform School Drama

There’s an amusing scene in Steve taking in a photo-op visit from a local Member of Parliament to Stanton Wood, a last-chance English reform school for adolescent boys with mental health issues and violent tendencies. Played by the marvelous Roger Allam with an impossibly posh accent and a cloak of self-satisfied condescension, Sir Hugh Montague Powell is more concerned about his honorific being used and the tricky vowels of his name correctly pronounced than he is with the welfare of the troubled lads or the dedicated staff struggling to give them direction.

When one mouthy student sets up the MP for mockery with a seemingly respectful question that ends in a blunt obscenity (one that happens to rhyme with blunt), it pops the visiting luminary’s pomposity like a bubble. Moments of humor and rare quiet are essential to relieve the manic chaos that more often reigns in this unflinching but compassionate slice of social realism, which Netflix would be wise to push with the same audience that made Adolescence a talked-about hit.

The film marks Cillian Murphy’s third collaboration with Belgian director Tim Mielants, following last year’s powerful Irish drama about Church-sanctioned abuse, Small Things Like These, and multiple episodes of Peaky Blinders. The screenplay was adapted by Max Porter from his 2023 novella, Shy, flipping the narrative center from the at-risk youth of the title (played here with wrenching, raw breakability by Jay Lycurgo) to the head teacher at Stanton Wood.

That character is the now-eponymous Steve, played by Murphy as a sensitive man with his own issues of guilt, addiction and severe exhaustion from trying to run a precariously underfunded, under-resourced institution. He gives a riveting performance, with searing pain fighting against the self-control and measured disposition he requires to do the job.

He spends half his time breaking up fights and de-escalating volatile situations but genuinely cares about the boys — played with a ton of spirit by a mix of actors and nonprofessionals. His bond with them is evidenced in a beautiful scene at the end, in which Steve talks about each of the boys with fondness and specific emotional insight, seeing them as vital individuals and not just interchangeable parts of an unsolvable problem. The switch in focus from Shy to Steve is less about beefing up the role of the name talent than showing how little there is that separates the two characters.

The setting in 1996 is significant, toward the end of 18 years of Conservative leadership that greatly reduced social care services in Britain, shifting the burden from taxpayers to for-profit companies or charities. Mielants’ film takes place over a single day, during which the ambivalence of both the authorities and the public to human need is reflected in everything that Steve and his skeletal staff are up against.

That said, Mielants and Porter are careful to avoid bleeding-heart breast-beating or speechy soapbox rants, instead letting scenes like the MP visit speak for themselves.

The filmmakers frame the action with parts of Steve’s interview for a TV news segment on Stanton Wood that appears to be far more in-depth than the end-of-the-hour human interest story to which he consented. Every time the camera crew rushes to catch another altercation or out-of-control behavioral episode seems to suggest that the report aims to confirm negative views of the program rather than offer a corrective.

The harshest blow comes when Steve and his tough deputy head Amanda (Tracey Ullman, showing serious dramatic chops) attend what they assume will be another pointless meeting with members of the controlling board. But they are summarily informed that the Trust is pulling their funding, selling the property and closing the school before the end of the year. Steve’s enraged reaction is the same kind of eruption of aggressive volatility witnessed in the students.

Arguments that the school is saving lives and keeping young men out of prison are illustrated with searing poignancy in scenes with 17-year-old Shy, whose depression spirals after a call from his mother explaining that his most recent fit of anger was the final straw; she and his stepfather have decided they want no further contact with him.

There seems both a desire to change and a sense of futility in his words when Shy says: “Sometimes you want to be four years old and start again but not fuck it up this time.” When the TV crew, after being denied access to the boys’ rooms starts poking around anyway, they discover a rucksack full of large rocks in Shy’s room but express bemusement rather than concern as to what he might be planning.

The first half of the film is nerve-jangling, with DP Robert Heyvaert’s handheld camera darting about and tempers constantly flaring into shouting and fighting. But just as the permanent state of borderline hysteria threatens to become too much, the joy of an impromptu game of muddy soccer in a sudden downpour signals a shift in tone. This is marked by the camera doing a 180-degree rotation and a calmer visual style going forward as the focus moves to the teachers.

Still dealing with physical and emotional pain from a car accident three years earlier, Steve pops painkillers and takes slugs of liquor from a secret stash. Amanda knows him well enough to see what’s going on, but she can only do so much when he won’t even talk about his trauma. There’s pathos in that messy side of Steve, in contrast to the balance of kindness and firmness he maintains to defuse tensions among the students.

Emily Watson, so chilling as a nun operating like a Mafia don in Small Things Like These, has strong scenes as school therapist Jenny, notably as she makes herself still and invisible when physical violence explodes during sessions with Shy and Tyrone (Tut Nyuot). The latter also alarms the staff with his sexually inappropriate behavior toward new teacher Shola (Simbi Ajikawo, aka rapper Little Simz). Jenny fears that Shy is regressing, but she shows equal concern for Steve’s strained coping skills.

Threading VHS footage from the news segment throughout, Mielants and editor Danielle Palmer shake up the rhythms and visual textures, while the unemphatic score by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow — along with the drum and bass pounding through the headphones of Shy’s Walkman — deftly navigates the film’s many changeable moods.

Even when you think you know where it’s going, Steve saves some surprises, including a lovely interlude toward the end that makes you realize you haven’t even considered what lives the teachers might have outside the school. The environment is all-consuming, but while hopelessness hangs in the air, the filmmakers never trade empathy for despair, suggesting that the boys’ futures are worth fighting for.