Proceder review – the life and crimes of a Polish rap star
Like so many other biopics of musicians from the wrong side of the ring road, this dramatisation of the life of Polish rapper Tomasz Chada wants to find a redemptive moral in the morass of biographical material. The problem is, Chada’s storyline is thin on salvation, given he was an enthusiastic car thief (until prison slowed down his long career in crime), a committed consumer of drugs and alcohol, and an all round toerag to most of the people in his life, including the many women who tried to reform him, and the producer buddy who gave him a big break. Nevertheless, true to his inner good Catholic Polish boy child, he loved his mum and longed for her affection and approval – even though he sort of craps on her, too.
He is played by Piotr Witkowski, whose feline eyes, eat-you-up grin and loping gait give Chada a charisma that helps you sort of see the appeal. His gritty raps about the mean streets of Warsaw and his life of crime – the usual fodder for hip-hop dirty realism the world over – are presumably sufficiently impressive in Polish to have won him an audience big enough to warrant this biopic in the first place. But it’s a rocky eight-kilometre road, and the bizarre narrative sleight of hand that the script pulls two thirds in feels like a convoluted way to pony up the redemption hit that audiences crave – one that maybaffle Chada fans who know what happened to their hero.
• Proceder is released in the UK on 29 November.