Directed by: Jan Komasa
Starring: Anson Boon, Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Monika Frajczyk, Kit Rakusen
Rating: ★★★☆☆
It could have been a film set in the world of Warsaw football hooligans, but that is not what The Good Boy turns out to be. The definitive film on the subject still has to be made. For now, the wait continues. Behind The Good Boy, released in the US under the title Heel, stands the guiding hand of Jerzy Skolimowski, a cosmopolitan veteran of Polish cinema, who handed a script written by Bartek Bartosik to director Jan Komasa. The appeal proved too strong to keep the production at home, and British partners soon came on board.
A 19 year old delinquent, Tommy (Anson Boon), is abducted, chained up and subjected to a rehabilitation process that begins in a basement. It involves exposure to classic novels, but also a fair amount of physical punishment. The burden of reforming him falls on the eccentric couple Chris (Stephen Graham) and Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough). The former hooligan is handed copies of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Kathryn openly admits that the latter is imposed as punishment, designed to test the boy’s endurance.
Worn down by his tormentors and their load of good intentions, Tommy agrees to play a constant game of dissimulation and role playing. Is he secretly planning to escape captivity and high culture? As he becomes increasingly domesticated, he gains his educators’ trust and is allowed upstairs, still in chains, to interact with their lonely son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). Tommy also recognizes himself in another social outcast offered protection: Rina (Monika Frajczyk), a Macedonian cleaner fleeing her family clan.
Komasa does not miss the mark with his first directorial effort outside Poland. After Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Silent Twins (2022), The Good Boy further confirms that the UK Poland axis excels at producing socially charged films handled with directorial confidence. It is a social thriller that reveals how pervasive conformity can be, whether rooted in youth culture driven by drugs, parties and illegal stunts, or in the didactic, puritanical and moralistic worldview the troubled couple impose on Tommy.
With this Bong Joon ho–esque film, in the best sense of the term, Polish cinema wunderkind Komasa hints that Stockholm syndrome may be a contagious phenomenon. The Good Boy held its ground in Toronto and went on to win a youth award at Seminci, a respected film festival in Spain.
Film Reviewed by Giuseppe Sedia
Published by Kino Mania on April 24, 2026