John Davidson is no stranger to the movies. After all, he’s starred in five of them over the course of the last four decades.
If his name doesn’t ring any bells, that’s fair enough: the real John Davidson is a Scottish activist who first rose to prominence in 1989, when the then-16-year-old was the subject of a BBC documentary, “John’s Not Mad.” Other docs followed in 2002 (“The Boy Can’t Help It”), 2009 (“Tourettes: I Swear I Can’t Help It”), 2014 (“Tourettes & Me”), and 2016 (“Tourette’s: Teenage Tics”). Davidson’s star power is rooted in personal pain. After the sudden onset of Tourette syndrome when he was just a young teen, Davidson spent many years in isolation and confusion before eventually turning his struggles and experience into action, becoming arguably the UK’s most recognizable Tourette’s activist.
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That Davidson is a hero, both on a national scale and to the wider Tourette’s community, is not in question. What Kirk Jones’ “I Swear” asks is how Davidson’s story might be packaged into more conventional biopic trappings and shared with the largest possible audience. And while those trappings ensure “I Swear” will adhere to the tropes and tricks of the subgenre — inspiring stories about very real people, with emotion to spare — a striking, star-making performance from star Robert Aramayo (“The Rings of Power,” “The Empty Man”) as Davidson places it a cut above the fray.
While the vagaries of life itself can account for some of the weirder ripples in “I Swear,” 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’s documentary film appearances) and ices over others (that the root cause of Davidson’s 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 — Davidson’s bond with Dottie Achenbach (a wonderful Maxine Peake), the mother of one his childhood friends, who is also fighting her own health battles — also suffers from moments of incoherence, but the immense power of that bond goes a long way.
We first meet John as a peppy young teenager (Scott Ellis Watson), a regular ol’ kiddo who is very invested in football (or soccer, depending on your homeland) and, it seems, pretty damn good at it to boot. He’s readying to move up to “big school” 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’s clearly proud of his son’s 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’s how Heather takes it.
What’s really happening, of course, is a sudden onset of Tourette’s, presumably exacerbated by mounting stress both at home and at school. John’s terror and confusion, vividly portrayed by Watson, is heartbreaking. But what’s 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’s happening before their very eyes. The only real changes that happen to “accommodate” 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’s 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.
His tics manifest in a variety of ways, starting with a head bob here and a shoulder nod there, an errant shout of “HEY!” 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’s 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’s yelling at her to take off her knickers. Going for a job interview at a community center that hosts events for kids? “I’m a pedo,” he shouts in the middle of an otherwise quiet room. Traveling by train? “I’ve got a bomb!,” he gasps.
Aramayo is excellent in the role, easily transversing between John’s 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 — “Why not spend your final months helping others?,” she wonders, a good enough message for any film of this ilk — 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.)
But while Dottie and her family’s entrance in John’s life offers some much-needed positivity, it also heralds in a grating, grinding narrative cycle to “I Swear.” Every time something good happens to John, he’s 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’s tragedies, not all of them necessarily entangled in his ailment, but none of them helped by it either.
It’s 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’s and their families, all of whom are welcoming of the sort of understanding and help he never got.
Davidson’s activism within his community will unquestionably be his legacy, and it’s disappointing that that portion of his life and work arrives so late into Jones’ film. Yet, Aramayo’s sensitive portrayal of the man and Jones’ unflinching dedication to showing some of Davidson’s 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’ film and, fortunately, a trove of other options await.
Grade: B
“I Swear” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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