‘Urchin’ isn’t an easy film to sit through, but it’s a strangely hypnotic one. Directed by Harris Dickinson, it follows the story of Mike Frank Delaney, a homeless man whose life is a loop of second chances and self-sabotage. People keep taking risks on him — offering food, work, or forgiveness – and every time, he lets them down. He’s a man who can talk the talk but shows little self-reflection, drifting through life without direction or remorse.

In one of the film’s most devastating scenes, a stranger buys him food – and Mike mugs him. The act, caught on CCTV, leads to a short prison sentence and a shot at rehabilitation. He’s given a job washing dishes in a small hotel kitchen, but even that slips through his fingers. Each time he’s offered a chance to start again, he finds a way to unravel it.

There’s a painful tension between how others see Mike – vulnerable, lost, redeemable – and how he really is: blank, unreachable, and occasionally violent. There’s no sense of progress or even awareness; he’s a man suspended between guilt and denial. A meeting arranged by his probation officer between Mike and one of his victims, Simon, could have been a powerful moment of confrontation, but it collapses into awkward silence. Mike has nothing to say – no apology, no understanding of the damage he’s caused. It’s both realistic and devastating.

Dickinson plays with dreamlike imagery – Mike wandering into caves, floating in the sky – that hints at a possible inner life, a fragile hope of redemption that never quite materializes. We’re left wondering whether he’s capable of change at all, or if his alienation is simply too deep to bridge.

‘Urchin’ is a bleak but quietly compelling study of failure and self-deception. It resists the usual redemption arc, suggesting instead that some people remain mysteries even to themselves. The film’s final impression is haunting: Mike moving on, unchanged, into another night – a man forever adrift between the person he could be and the one he’s become.