Good Boy (2025 Komasa film)

Good Boy (2025 Komasa film)

Good Boy (also known as Heel) is a 2025 black comedy thriller film directed by Jan Komasa. It stars Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon, and Kit Rakusen. It tells the story of a married couple who abduct a 19-year-old criminal and try various methods to rehabilitate him. The film had its world premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September 2025.

Plot

Good Boy (2025 Komasa film)

A 19-year-old criminal named Tommy is kidnapped and forced into rehabilitation at the hands of a married couple.

Cast

Good Boy (2025 Komasa film)

• Stephen Graham as Chris • Andrea Riseborough as Kathryn • Anson Boon as Tommy • Kit Rakusen as Jonathan • Monika Frajczyk as Rina • Savannah Steyn as Gabby • Mila Jankowska as Lindsay • Callum Booth-Ford as Ste • Noah Valentine as Jack • Noah Manzoor as Mikey • Maciej Stepniak as Klement • Jessica Johnson as a police officer • Austin Haynes as a young boy • Helena Calvert as Helen

Production

Good Boy (2025 Komasa film)

Producer Jerzy Skolimowski approached director Jan Komasa with the film's screenplay while the latter was promoting his 2019 film, Corpus Christi. The screenplay, originally written in Polish and set in Warsaw, was adapted into English and set in Yorkshire to appeal to a wider audience. It is Komasa's first English-language film.

Principal photography took place in Yorkshire and Warsaw, and was completed in October 2024.

Release

Good Boy (2025 Komasa film)

A promotional clip was released on 3 September 2025. The film had its world premiere in the Centerpiece section of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September 2025. It was also screened at the BFI London Film Festival and the Rome Film Festival.

The film will be released by Kino Świat in Poland. In November 2025, it was acquired for distribution by Magnolia Pictures in the United States; Signature in the United Kingdom and Ireland; X Verleih in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; Minerva Pictures in Italy; YouPlanet/Caramel Films in Spain; Sundae in Japan; 18k Films in the Benelux; Front Row Films in the Middle East; Pris Audiovisuais in Portugal; Shaw Organisation in Singapore; Beta Film in Bulgaria; The Film Group in Greece; Catchplay in Taiwan; and Bir Film in Turkey.

Reception

Good Boy (2025 Komasa film)

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 87% of 62 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Wrestling with provocative questions about rehabilitation and having a maniacally fun time while it's at it, Heel is a nutty thriller that has a surprising amount of method to its madness." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 63 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Damon Wise of Deadline wrote, "Like an early Yorgos Lanthimos, the strangeness of the premise does a lot of heavy lifting, but the performers literally bring character to what might easily have been a one-note movie." Christopher Llewellyn Reed of Film Festival Today noted that the film "pleasantly surprises in the way it spins out its story threads," adding that "there is more to Tommy than we originally thought, and more to the movie, too," even if "some of it strains credulity." Pavel Snapkou of Showbiz by PS described the film as "an insanely interesting story with a rather sad ending," praising its "fantastic" setup and performances while arguing that the finale "throws away everything that was built in the first half of the film".