Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell) is a newly recruited British soldier from
Derbyshire who has to leave behind his orphaned younger brother after being
deployed along with his regiment to Belfast at the height of the violence (In
1971, obviously). The first day after he
arrives the troops are briefed about the geographic danger zones in the
republican West of the city, especially around the notorious “IRA stronghold”
of Divis Street council flats, and of the splintering factions between old IRA
and the new, younger Provisional IRA.
On his first morning in the city they
have to go door-to-door in a Catholic neighbourhood in order to find some
illegal weapons, where they come up against strong resistance from the
locals. This quickly gets out of hand leading
to a shocking moment of violence that separates Gary from the rest of the
regiment. After running away from some
young men who are trying to kill him (filmed with an amazing Point-Break style
chase scene through the backstreets), he is alone and terrified and has to
steal some civilian clothes to make it back to the barracks.
After bumping into a young kid who has
powerful family connections, Gary is drawn into a series of escalating violent
betrayals as the night progresses between the older and younger elements of the
IRA, the undercover military and the rest of his regiment…
It astonishes how confidently Jack
O’Connell is creating a name for himself as a serious young actor. Both this and Starred Up have incredibly emotional, yet restrained, performances. In Starred
Up he plays a young angry and violent young offender who is moved early to
an adult prison in order to contain him, and in ’71 he plays a rightly terrified soldier way out of his depth in an
impossible situation. Both require an amazing
ability to portray vulnerability in incredibly violent and chaotic
envirnoments.
The script is almost perfectly paced
with very little excess, and even in slower scenes with little dialogue, there
is an amazing attention to detail and atmosphere. What is so disturbing about the film, is the
focus on the men, women and children that were caught up in the violence – a
major theme being how young children and teenagers are forced to confront the
same violence as adults on a daily basis.
The apparent futility of the violence is
highlighted in two brilliant moments that both made me laugh: firstly when Gary
admits to his new young acquaintance that he doesn’t know whether he is a
Catholic or Protestant, the difference means nothing to him. Another similar moment occurs when a young
Catholic woman asks him where he is from: his reply of Derbyshire prompts her
to reply that she has friends in Nottingham, which leads Gary to smirk and
reply that Nottingham and Derby don’t get on – when she asks why, he admits
that he doesn’t really know… These
arbitrary rivalries (and obviously I understand that they didn’t feel arbitrary
at the time, far from it) are made even more tenuous as the story moves forward
and peoples allegiances change in the face of extenuating circumstances.
The tension that is created throughout
the film is relentless, is created with an incredible patience and seems to
lack a lot of the clichés that I began to fear might enter the story in the
hands of a mainstream director. This is
definitely helped by the unyielding orchestral/electronic score from Belfast
native David Holmes
What is most amazing though, is that this
is the directorial feature debut from
Yann Demange – and neither the
filmmaker nor the cinematographer Tat
Radcliffe has a Wikipedia page (at time of writing, of course). This level of tension from first timers
simply puts other action directors to shame…
Depending on what your own experience of The Troubles was (a deeply
cynical name for such a tragic period), you either will watch this film and
hope to never have to experience it again, or (like me) will watch this film
and want to find out more about such a heartbreaking period in local history.
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