I SWEAR
(director/writer: Kirk Jones; cinematographer: James Blann; editor: Sam Sneade; music: Stephen Rennicks; cast: Robert Aramayo (John Davidson), Scott Ellis Watson (Young John), Maxine Peake (Dotty), Someried Campbell (Palace Official), Michael Dylan (Butler), David Carlyle (Chris Achenbach), Peter Mullan (Tommy Trotter), Shirley Henderson (Heather Davidson, mom), Steven Cree (David Davidson, dad), Piacentini Smith (Murray, classmate), Andrea Bisset (Lucy, little girl with Tourette’s syndrome); Runtime: 120; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Oiers Tempest, Kirk Jones, Georgia Bayliff; Sony Pictures Classic; 2025-UK)
“Earnest crowd-pleasing bio-pic on the Scottish activist John Davidson.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Brit filmmaker Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine”/ “Everybody’s Fine”) directs/writes this earnest but formulaic, and crowd-pleasing bio-pic on the Scottish activist John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) who was diagnosed as a teenager (Scott Ellis Watson) with Tourette’s syndrome (a neurological motor disorder), which he calls a condition. John has been raising awareness about it for most of his life, and there have been several previous documentaries on him.
At home, in the Scottish border town of Galashiels, in 1983, John’s working-class dad (Steven Cree) walks out on the family and the 13-year-old is raised by his clueless mom (Shirley Henderson), not knowing how to care for her ailing son or even believe he has a sickness. At a private school, he must deal with bullies who mocked him for having tics and outbursts, such as when he yells out such things at a soccer game as “Suck my cock!” It resulted in his playing soccer as a goalie again being crushed. No one at the time was aware of what he was suffering from, as he endured his ailments without any support.
Things change for the better in 1996 when John was a 20something (Robert Aramayo) and his former classmate (Piacentini Smith) introduces himto his mother (Maxine Peake), a cancer patient recovering at home, who was prior to that a mental health nurse. She helps him handle his tics and tantrums. He’s also helped by Tommy Trotter (Peter Mullan), a community center head custodian who gives John a janitor’s job.
It’s a conventional film that gets over as a human interest educational bio-pic, telling us in a humorous but hollow way about a backward 1980s and 1990s society that didn’t understand what it was like to have Tourette’s syndrome.
Though, for the most part, efficiently executed, there was one sequence of John talked into being a drug-runner that was awkwardly filmed and didn’t flow with the rest of the film.
Aramayo’s sensitive portrayal of a pained Davidson dealing with a hostile environment is the heart of the so-so film with the great story. His moving performance (tics and all) gives us a good idea of what the unfortunate but feisty guy was going through as he spends his life advocating for those with Tourette’s.
It played at the Toronto International Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 5/3/2026 GRADE: B-
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