This is a soundtrack, not a film. It doesn't ask any questions, lay out any arguments, or challenge any taboos. It's got a stonking lead performance and it looks period correct when not depending on stock imagery. It's got loads of minor pop music - a good mixtape, the sort of themed selection you'd find cover mounted on Uncut or Mojo magazine. It could have been a blast. Or, with some genuine insight to the personal relationships only vaguely sketched in the script, it could have been a more substantial drama.
But it's a cheap shot to prop up Terri Hooley's self hype with endless stock footage of the troubles - especially the Miami showband material. As if the scene where Terri and his little band of gullible, fame seeking youths being stopped by the Brits and discovered to be the true cross-community ideal was somehow related (what an awkward scene that was).
Truth is, punk didn't do much in or for Northern Ireland and after its brief bubble burst, Hooley never found another "wave" to incompetently exploit - except perhaps the trendy "hagiography of failures in popular culture" that passes for biography in too many recent films. (Next: The Gary Glitter Story...?).
Where it really struggles to even entertain is in constantly trying to raise the minimal narrative above a basic "let's put on a show in the barn" story, by co-opting historical sectarian division and political oppositions as contextual justification for a bunch of people who were essentially running away, rather than confronting it.
The fawning climax, a clumsy collage of wet eyed forgiveness and self-justification during a concert in the Ulster Hall ("It holds 2000 people!") is downright creepy.
And if PUNK meant anything, anywhere, then surely Hooley's apocryphal shout "New York has the hair, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason." is its betrayal.
But it's a cheap shot to prop up Terri Hooley's self hype with endless stock footage of the troubles - especially the Miami showband material. As if the scene where Terri and his little band of gullible, fame seeking youths being stopped by the Brits and discovered to be the true cross-community ideal was somehow related (what an awkward scene that was).
Truth is, punk didn't do much in or for Northern Ireland and after its brief bubble burst, Hooley never found another "wave" to incompetently exploit - except perhaps the trendy "hagiography of failures in popular culture" that passes for biography in too many recent films. (Next: The Gary Glitter Story...?).
Where it really struggles to even entertain is in constantly trying to raise the minimal narrative above a basic "let's put on a show in the barn" story, by co-opting historical sectarian division and political oppositions as contextual justification for a bunch of people who were essentially running away, rather than confronting it.
The fawning climax, a clumsy collage of wet eyed forgiveness and self-justification during a concert in the Ulster Hall ("It holds 2000 people!") is downright creepy.
And if PUNK meant anything, anywhere, then surely Hooley's apocryphal shout "New York has the hair, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason." is its betrayal.