Urchin

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Homelessness and drug addiction are serious social and public health issues that have no easy answers, especially for those experiencing them. Moreover, despite compassion-based government and charitable programs aimed at addressing these problems, many in society at large are unsympathetic to those seeking to overcome these circumstances, making their recovery doubly difficult. Winning over supporters to these causes can thus be an uphill battle, but one way of doing so is depicting the harrowing challenges that the afflicted undergo on a daily basis. And this is where the directorial debut from actor Harris Dickinson could have made an impact, but, sadly, it misses the mark. The film tells the story of Mike (Frank Dillane), a recovering addict who did time for assaulting and robbing a would-be Samaritan, chronicling his journey to rebuild his life after being released from prison. However, the unfocused narrative meanders wildly, coming across like a series of disjointed, randomly strung together events lacking any discernible sense of direction. What’s more, there’s virtually no back story, and the protagonist’s character development is nearly nonexistent. In fact, one could contend that it’s hard to see how Mike’s persona is truthfully a bona fide reflection of this offering’s title. Consequently, because viewers have little awareness of who they’re dealing with, it’s almost impossible for audience members to care much about what ultimately happens to this character, thereby defeating the aim of generating support for his redemption or the cause of his peers. On top of that, several surreal, impressionistic sequences muddy the waters even further, providing no additional clarity from either a literal or symbolic standpoint. Given the stunning lack of coherence or any meaningful attempt at making a case for these causes, I’m truly amazed at the overwhelmingly positive response the picture has received, including a surprising number of accolades from film festivals and critics’ organizations. “Urchin” has been named one of the Top 10 Independent Films of 2025 by the National Board of Review, and it captured two wins on four nominations at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, including a somewhat baffling best actor award for Dillane (it’s a good performance, but one worthy of top honors?). Every year it seems there are a handful of releases that undeservingly receive mind-boggling degrees of praise, and, in my view, this is definitely one of them for 2025. It’s equally disappointing that the film has failed to do more for spotlighting the issues at the core of its central premise. It never hurts to lend a helping hand, but it can be difficult to do so when one doesn’t have a clearer picture of how to proceed in the first place.

“Mike” (Frank Dillane) isn’t a bad man, he’s just an addict, down on his luck and living on the streets of an unforgiving London. The social services manage to find him a room in an hostel and even a job washing dishes at an hotel restaurant, but his path to the straight and narrow is anything but yellow-bricked and with temptation never far away and his frustrations made worse by his new relationship with a colleague who only seems to manage to make matters worse, things are not looking rosy. What might he do to escape this self-perpetuating cycle? Now this is not a film that offers us solutions. Nor does it move along sharpishly. It is more of a fly-on-the-wall observation of a young, vaguely charismatic, man who is trapped in a maelstrom of his own, and of a complicit society’s, making. Whilst under the protection of some sort of blanket, he has a chance. When left to his own devices, well he even bites one of the hands that tries to feed him - and that leads to prison and then a reconciliation meeting with his victim that seems to further emphasise his lack of direction. It’s not a great film, it does meander a bit too often and it certainly lacks focus at times, but somehow that can work to present us with something quite grittily plausible about life amongst the homeless in a big city where they are considered probably as much of a nuisance as the pigeons - only cared for less. Auteur Harris Dickinson has form in this space with “Postcards from London” (2018) in that he is not averse to exposing an underbelly of society that isn’t always the easiest to absorb, and here he uses a solid effort from Dillane to illuminate something of a sub-culture that most of us cross the road to avoid. He didn’t cast himself in the lead role, though he does feature sparingly with a big snake (not an euphemism) and so he has left himself the opportunity to create better from behind the camera and what we have here is, I think, something quite honest. Low budget and a bit rough around the edges from a production perspective, it is, but coupled with a carefully selected soundtrack it works better than I was expecting.