That Davidson is a hero, both on a national scale and to the wider Tourette\u2019s community, is not in question. What Kirk Jones\u2019<\/a> \u201cI Swear\u201d asks is how Davidson\u2019s story might be packaged into more conventional biopic trappings<\/a> and shared with the largest possible audience. And while those trappings ensure \u201cI Swear\u201d will adhere to the tropes and tricks of the subgenre \u2014 inspiring stories about very real people, with emotion to spare<\/a> \u2014 a striking, star-making performance from star Robert Aramayo (\u201cThe Rings of Power,\u201d \u201cThe Empty Man\u201d) as Davidson places it a cut above the fray.<\/p>\n While the vagaries of life itself can account for some of the weirder ripples in \u201cI Swear,\u201d the needs of fitting such a fraught story into just two hours also complicate matters. The script, also from Jones, ignores a few key factors (like all of Davidson\u2019s documentary film<\/a> appearances) and ices over others (that the root cause of Davidson\u2019s disorder is never interrogated bothers, even as it could fit neatly inside other issues involving his family, who were deeply unprepared to help him). The emotional ballast of the film \u2014 Davidson\u2019s bond with Dottie Achenbach (a wonderful Maxine Peake), the mother of one his childhood friends, who is also fighting her own health battles \u2014 also suffers from moments of incoherence, but the immense power of that bond goes a long way.<\/p>\n We first meet John as a peppy young teenager (Scott Ellis Watson), a regular ol\u2019 kiddo who is very invested in football (or soccer, depending on your homeland) and, it seems, pretty damn good at it to boot. He\u2019s readying to move up to \u201cbig school\u201d and try out for a starry new coach, and while his dad David (Steven Cree) seems mostly interested in hitting up the local pub, he\u2019s clearly proud of his son\u2019s athletic prowess. His brittle mum Heather (a heartbreaking and frustrating Shirley Henderson) is barely holding things together as is, and then John starts, well, acting out? being silly? playing at something? At least, that\u2019s how Heather takes it.<\/p>\n What\u2019s really happening, of course, is a sudden onset of Tourette\u2019s, presumably exacerbated by mounting stress both at home and at school. John\u2019s terror and confusion, vividly portrayed by Watson, is heartbreaking. But what\u2019s worse is the reaction of everyone else around him: his friends almost instantly back away, the bullies pull in, the football dreams disappear, and his own family can only find disdain and anger for what\u2019s happening before their very eyes. The only real changes that happen to \u201caccommodate\u201d him: his dad leaves and his mum sticks him in front of the fireplace at meal times, so that any food he spits out will land somewhere readily cleanable. That John\u2019s fight would eventually become about teaching others how to understand the disorder is laid plain from the start, but it will take him decades to get to that point.<\/p>\n His tics manifest in a variety of ways, starting with a head bob here and a shoulder nod there, an errant shout of \u201cHEY!\u201d to no one in particular, and some major stage fright when it comes to the classroom and the football pitch. As he ages up (Aramayo takes on the part after the film\u2019s first half hour), the verbal tics get worse, often culminating in John yelling the worst possible things at the worst possible times. John sees a girl he likes? He\u2019s yelling at her to take off her knickers. Going for a job interview at a community center that hosts events for kids? \u201cI\u2019m a pedo,\u201d he shouts in the middle of an otherwise quiet room. Traveling by train? \u201cI\u2019ve got a bomb!,\u201d he gasps.<\/p>\n Aramayo is excellent in the role, easily transversing between John\u2019s pain and confusion and a wincing humor about the whole situation. When he reunites with a childhood pal and meets his warm and winning mother Dottie, things start to shift. The plucky Dottie, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, is eager to assist young John \u2014 \u201cWhy not spend your final months helping others?,\u201d she wonders, a good enough message for any film of this ilk \u2014 and he takes to the Achenbach home with relative ease. (Heather, who has spent the past decade bossing around her eldest son, is floored by the possibility that anyone else might see the good in him, let alone want it in their lives.)<\/p>\n But while Dottie and her family\u2019s entrance in John\u2019s life offers some much-needed positivity, it also heralds in a grating, grinding narrative cycle to \u201cI Swear.\u201d Every time something good happens to John, he\u2019s almost immediately kicked back down again. The cycle happens with maddening, almost funny regularity, as John is lifted up up up by professional prospects, good news for Dottie, a legal win, and even a brand-new flat, only to be pushed down down down by life\u2019s tragedies, not all of them necessarily entangled in his ailment, but none of them helped by it either.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a pattern that continues throughout the majority of the film, an emotionally shattering experience that does something that likely feels familiar to people like the real John Davidson: takes away the ability to hope for something better. Yet, finally, armed with both pain and pluck, John makes a choice to reach out to the people who need him most, kids with Tourette\u2019s and their families, all of whom are welcoming of the sort of understanding and help he never got. <\/p>\n Davidson\u2019s activism within his community will unquestionably be his legacy, and it\u2019s disappointing that that portion of his life and work arrives so late into Jones\u2019 film. Yet, Aramayo\u2019s sensitive portrayal of the man and Jones\u2019 unflinching dedication to showing some of Davidson\u2019s most painful moments, the ones that pushed him into action, add up to an insightful biopic that chronicles a very worthy subject. Audiences will likely want to learn more about the real Davidson after seeing Jones\u2019 film and, fortunately, a trove of other options await. <\/p>\n Grade: B<\/p>\n \u201cI Swear\u201d premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Davidson is no stranger to the movies. After all, he\u2019s starred in five of them over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,11337,2695,88582,206,900,46686],"class_list":{"0":"post-141966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-festivals","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-i-swear","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-reviews","14":"tag-tiff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Wake](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/WUDM_20240619_03917_R_8b02c7.jpg\")
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<\/a> <\/p>\n