The Best Michael Fassbender Movie You’ve Never Seen Is Getting Harder to Access for Netflix Users

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Michael Fassbender on the red carpet for Prometheus

Rahul Malhotra is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has been writing for Collider for over two years, and has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal to introduce audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Swing and a miss > measured victory. Also, #JusticeForHan. (He/Him).

One of the most unusual musical biopics of recent times, the Irish-language film Kneecap opened to near-unanimous praise a couple of years ago. It was based on the real-life story of the hip-hop trio of the same name, and featured the group's members as themselves. The movie also starred Michael Fassbender in a memorable supporting role, one of his rare acting appearances following a brief sabbatical around a decade ago. Kneecap premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and was selected as Ireland's official entry to the Oscars later that year. Although it didn't exactly break box office records, it earned spectacular reviews. Kneecap is currently available to stream on Netflix domestically, but was barred on the ad-supported tier this month.

Around 145 Netflix titles were restricted to the subscribers of the streamer's ad-supported tier in January, mainly due to rights issues. Directed by Rich Peppiat, Kneecap followed the rise of the hip-hop trio, whose politically-charged music gained fame some years ago for its themes of identity and individualism. The trio comprises Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and J.J. Ó Dochartaigh, who use the stage names Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí, respectively. Fassbender brought pathos to his role as one of the band members' former revolutionary dads, a flip-side to the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another. Kneecap featured inventive hip-hop musical sequences, much like Eminem's 8 Mile and the little-seen film Bodied, directed by Joseph Kahn. It's now sitting at a "certified fresh" 96% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, "A rebellious anthem for cultural preservation, Kneecap is as shaggy, rambunctious, and lovable as the eponymous hip-hop group at its center."

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In his review, Collider's Chase Hutchinson wrote, "After pushing up against the confines of a conventional musical biopic, it does end up mostly operating within them, hitting all the notes you’d expect it to hit, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring mostly true when it counts." Last year, Fassbender also starred alongside Cate Blanchett in director Steven Soderbergh's espionage thriller Black Bag. Before that, he headlined the Showtime series The Agency, and starred in David Fincher's The Killer, which is streaming on Netflix. You can watch Kneecap on the streamer, as long as you aren't subscribed to the ad-supported tier.