You may recognize I Swear (now on Netflix) from its moment of infamy at the 2026 BAFTA ceremony. As is common for those with Tourette syndrome, the biopic’s subject, John Davidson, involuntarily shouted the absolute wrong thing at the absolute wrong time, in this case, racial slurs as Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage. The ensuing controversy — mostly over BAFTA producers allowing the moment to air on TV despite a tape delay — elevated the film’s profile, and sparked a larger conversation after ceremony attendee Jamie Foxx refused to accept that Davidson’s outburst was unintentional. Such an incident is the very subject matter of I Swear, which dramatizes Davidson’s life, and his work to educate the public about the misunderstood medical condition.
I SWEAR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: It’s 2019. John Davidson (Game of Thrones alum Robert Aramayo) is dressed to the nines and nervous — he’s about to get a medal from the Queen of England herself. The plush room is hushed and quiet, and as he stands in the back of the room he has an involuntary Johnny Rottenesque moment: “F— THE QUEEN!” John blurts. This started happening back in 1983, when John (Scott Ellis Watson) was 13 and just starting high school in Scotland. He’d twitch uncontrollably, and then loudly and suddenly shout expletives. Other students bullied him and beat him up. The principal doled out corporal punishment, whipping his hand with a leather belt. His mother (Shirley Henderson) banished him from dinner after he involuntarily spat his food across the table. His considerable skill as a soccer goalie disintegrated, disappointing his father (Steven Cree). He was expelled from school. After his parents fought and fought and then divorced, he walked fully clothed into the river and submerged himself.
Thirteen years go by. The adult John lives with his mother. He takes medication that sort of helps — it suppresses some of his tics, but makes him feel constantly lousy. His mother, clearly frayed to her last thread, consistently tells him to “stop it” after his outbursts. A chance encounter with an old school buddy, Murray (Francesco Piacentini-Smith), leads to a dinner invitation and an introduction to Murray’s mother, Dottie (Maxine Peake). She’s dying of cancer. She’s a former mental health nurse. And she’s the sympathetic ear John has needed for half his life and never had. So sympathetic, she invites him to move in with her family, and he accepts. She cares for him in a simple, effective manner, with compassionate tolerance. She instructs him to drop the ineffective meds, and accepts him for who he is. He’s diagnosed with Tourette, and he and Dottie get to educating themselves about the condition.
The next couple of decades of Tommy’s life play out episodically: A night out clubbing with Murray ends in barroom fisticuffs. He gets a job at a community center working for Tommy (Peter Mullan), who shares Dottie’s compassionate tolerance. The clubbing incident ends up in a courtroom, where the legitimacy of Tourette syndrome is debated. John’s hospitalized after a single involuntary word gets him beaten with a crowbar. He meets other people with Tourette, finding kinship in their struggles. He organizes special events for people with the condition, to educate them and their families. Amidst all this, there’s much shouting of wildly inappropriate expletives and epithets that are very funny despite not being very funny at all. It’s what you call “cognitive dissonance,” and wrestling with the concept in any context is inevitably as confusing as it is enlightening.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Davidson was the subject of a series of BBC documentaries: 1989’s highly touted John’s Not Mad, and its two sequels, 2002’s The Boy Can’t Help It and 2009’s Tourettes: I Swear I Can’t Help It.
Performance Worth Watching: Aramayo is uniformly excellent in the lead, and Peake’s surrogate-mother role proves to be the catalyst for the central relationship that keeps the film’s empathetic heart beating.
Our Take: I Swear breaks no boundaries of cinematic storytelling, but it does break through any emotional walls you may have built up around yourself. The flimsier they are, the more effective the film will be. Sure, Davidson’s bio arrives with a BOATS (Based On A True Story) misunderstood-underdog arc that’ll be sniffed at by only the hardest-hearted cads out there. It’s a story prefabricated to tug heartstrings and draw out a few tears of joy and sadness, but its confident execution finds writer/director Kirk Jones drawing out fine performances by Aramayo, Peake, Mullan, and Henderson, who find the beautiful, vulnerable humanity in these people and situations.
Beneath the film’s clear aim to use drama as a means for education and advocacy is the aforementioned cognitive dissonance: A scene late in the film puts John and a young woman with Tourette in the backseat of a car, blurting out horrifically offensive things at such a rapid pace, we can’t help but laugh (it’s ultimately a relief for them to let it all out after spending so many hours of the day trying to hold it all in). Perhaps it’s a lesson in laughing with people rather than at them; perhaps it’s an opportunity to ponder the peculiarities of the human condition; perhaps it illustrates how situations can be hilarious and sad and tender all at the same time. Simplicity of emotion too often anchors biopics like I Swear to tedious formula, but there’s absolutely nothing simple about the emotions the movie inspires in its audience.
Our Call: One more perhaps for you: Perhaps the handling of and reaction to the BAFTAs incident only adds to I Swear’s cultural relevance. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
