Cillian Murphy leans into the haunted quiet that has defined his recent run in Steve, a Netflix drama from director Tim Mielants that adapts Max Porter’s novella Shy. Where Small Things Like These cast Murphy as a conscience-stricken everyman, Steve puts him on the other side of the desk as the headteacher of a residential school for boys with behavioral and societal difficulties. The film unfolds over a single chaotic day: the institution is about to be shut down, funding has evaporated, tempers are flaring, and Steve is working every room in a last-ditch effort to keep the place from collapsing.
Murphy’s performance is calibrated to the minute. The tight jaw, the careful body language, the flashes of warmth that give way to exhaustion all feel lived in. The movie’s pulse, though, belongs to newcomer Jay Lycurgo as Shy. He plays the title character from Porter’s book with raw volatility and a deep well of sadness, and his scenes with Murphy crackle. Their relationship becomes the emotional center of the film, a push-pull between a boy who expects the worst from himself and a teacher who insists there is something to save.
Mielants shoots Steve with a brisk, observational rhythm, letting crowded hallways, cramped offices, and urgent whispered conferences do as much storytelling as the dialogue. As the day unspools, he introduces surreal grace notes that tilt the movie toward something dreamlike without breaking its naturalism. It is a more expressive approach than Small Things Like These, and it suits the material. You feel the bureaucracy grinding everyone down, the cumulative toll of care work, and the way hope can look like stubbornness when the system has already made up its mind.
The trade-off is familiarity. After Oppenheimer, Murphy’s second Tim Mielants collaboration lands squarely in his comfort zone, and Steve does not uncover many new shades of his screen persona. Some late stylistic gambits feel more decorative than essential, and the script’s perspective shifts from Porter’s Shy to Steve can leave the boys around them sketched rather than fully realized. Even so, there are stretches here that sing, especially when Lycurgo’s volatility meets Murphy’s steadiness and the film lets their scenes breathe.
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Steve is a modest, humane character piece about burnout, institutions in free fall, and the fragile bond between a teacher and a kid everyone has already written off. It will play especially well for viewers who responded to Murphy’s work in Small Things Like These and his collaborations with Christopher Nolan and Danny Boyle, and it confirms that Tim Mielants and Cillian Murphy have built an effective partnership. Not essential, but affecting and expertly acted.
Score: 6/10
Steve (2025)
- Cast: Cillian Murphy, Tracey Ullman, Jay Lycurgo, Little Simz, Douggie McMeekin, Youssef Kerkour, Roger Allam, Emily Watson
- Director: Tim Mielants
- Genre: Drama
- Runtime: 92 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: October 3, 2025
- Movies Like Steve: Aftersun, The Lost Daughter, Nickel Boys
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