REVIEW: ‘I Swear’ Spotlights Robert Aramayo’s Star-Making Turn

This past February, Google searches for English actor Robert Aramayo soared when he won Best Actor over sure things like Timothée Chalamet and Michael B. Jordan at the BAFTAs. Winning for the biopic I Swear, a film that had not screened much outside of the UK, Aramayo’s charming speech (including an Ethan Hawke shoutout) put him on the radar of those who were not already familiar with his work on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I Swear, releasing in the US this week, deserves its unanticipated BAFTA win: Aramayo delivers a star-making performance.

Based on the life of Scottish activist John Davidson, I Swear follows Davidson as he navigates living with Tourette syndrome at a time when little research or public understanding of the disorder existed. When a preteen John (Scott Ellis Watson) begins exhibiting symptoms of Tourette syndrome, it baffles his parents (Shirley Henderson, Steven Cree), angers school administrators, and ends his promising future as a soccer player. It’s a heartbreaking start, told with straightforward direction by Kirk Jones, who also wrote the film.

Aramayo appears as Davidson in the film’s opening scene (exquisitely edited by Sam Sneade), but doesn’t return until the action jumps from his 1980s childhood to 1996, when Davidson is in his mid-twenties.

I Swear doesn’t spare us the cruelty that John Davidson faces. 

By then, Davidson had been formally diagnosed and medicated. But he still struggles to fit in at his rural town, where few people understand his uncontrollable swearing and verbal tics.

Only Dottie (Maxine Peake), a mental health nurse and mother to one of Davidson’s childhood friends, shows Davidson the humanity he has so desperately been denied, helping him find a job and including him in her family’s life. Peake’s performance, full of warmth and empathy, is a welcome presence amid the turbulence of the story.

There’s an unflinching effort by Jones’ screenplay to show the unkindness, even cruelty, of people when encountering something they don’t understand. It’s here that I Swear holds up a mirror to the audience. Davidson’s tics and outbursts, at times full of insulting language, are not indicative of his perspective or beliefs.

Robert Aramayo fully embodies the role with outstanding results. 

Even so, he’s bullied, beaten, thrown out of a courtroom by a merciless judge, and encounters a devastating amount of prejudice for a disorder few attempt to understand over the course of the film. Though Jones’ film doesn’t reinvent the paint-by-numbers formula most biopics follow, there’s a genuine heart to I Swear.

A biopic lives and dies by its central performance, and I Swear has a dynamic lead in Robert Aramayo, best known for playing young Elrond on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It’s rare to see a performer this seamlessly committed to physically embodying a role.

When Aramayo speaks, you lean in to listen and hang on to every word. Peake is the only actor given material to match Davidson’s well-roundedness. However, Henderson’s performance as Davidson’s mother comes close. All other parts, from rigid judges to kindly employers, feel like underwritten stock characters.

Despite a rushed ending, I Swear is worth watching for Aramayo alone. 

The emphasis on Davidson’s personal experiences leaves little room for his burgeoning activism until the last twenty minutes or so, leaving the ending to feel rushed. Davidson’s activism was the subject of three BBC documentaries between 1989 and 2009.

The film, however, seems more interested in making his activism a coda than in advancing the story. It moves so quickly from domestic, personal drama to a highlight reel that the film ends less like a biopic and more like a news segment.

Even for its flaws, I Swear possesses an extraordinary leading man in Aramayo, whose performance is worth the price of admission. Even though his BAFTA win was a surprise to those who feverishly follow awards season, it won’t be a surprise when you actually see the performance. A genuine star-making performance feels so rare these days that it is a refreshing, exhilarating thing to behold.

I Swear is out now in theaters.