'71

Heroic long-suffering young British soldier gets trapped between warring Monarchist/Republican factions in Belfast. Clever Brits get him out. Film begins with supposedly heartwarming scenes showing lonely young soldier on his home turf in Derbyshire looking after his young son. Mother absent, son living in some sort of very dodgy-looking hostel. Tugging at heart-strings preparatory stuff. A sub-plot that isn't taken anywhere. Later in Belfast, young soldier comes across another extremely nasty young boy the same age who has been brutalised by living in an extreme Unionist community where his father is a big shot. This young boy eventually has his arms blown off. We are shown this in loving, lingering detail. I personally don't have much of an appetite for looking closely at bodies of young boys with their arms blown off. In one of many unfinished sub-plots, we hear a woman saying "he's stlll breathing" but we never find out what happened to him. British Army training and grit win the day. Irish protestants and catholics provide background. Belfast couldn't be portrayed as more squalid. Token black man introduced. Token woman also introduced, but incipient romance doesn't blossom. Another sub-plot that doesn't go anywhere. Laughable depiction of IRA commanders and even more laughable depiction of British special ops officers. Endless scenes of nothing happening, made dramatic by overdubbed thumping noises, shaky hand-held camera, blurring, etc. Really boring. You can tell from a thousand miles away that this is just another movie that sets out shock you, and for that reason it doesn't shock you and is just boring. Don't even get me started on the politics. The representation of the Republican and Monarchist (or if you prefer, Catholic and Protestant) sides of the struggle is sketchy and meaningless (you need to listen to me here; I'm from Belfast). Its only purpose is to show you how great the British Army was, how their tough training got them through, how much they had to put up with trying to keep order among these more or less subhuman Irish in their unbelievably squalid lives. This is the Northern Ireland situation in 1971 as it might have been seen by a black ops military expert working for an unnamed third country. It's like an army training film. GIve it a miss unless you like watching violence portrayed on screen. Stylistically, this film seems heavily indebted to Matteo Garrone's "Gomorrah" (2008) but never reaches anything like the same heights.

Movies about the IRA and the troubles in Northern Ireland have a few problems. Since due to the nature of this conflict people on different sides tend to look and often sound alike they need to be distinguished very clearly. Unfortunately with the fog of the thick accents and the actors who aren't that different looking from each other coupled with 2 factions of the IRA this movie turned out to be hard to follow. The basic story is a British soldier gets left behind in hostile territory in Belfast. He is chased by the IRA. Then there are some rather complex deals between factions. The bombing was scary and well done. But after that things got too hard to follow. Jack O'Connell of Unbroken is a good actor and he looks like he suffered in the role. Don't bother

This film follows a British soldier who gets left behind in Belfast and has to survive the night whilst being hunted down by the enemy. '71 had some moments of intense action, thrilling suspense and plenty of emotion, meaning it had something in it for everyone. When i heard it was another war film, i instantly got an image of what i thought it was going to be but to my surprise it was very different from your average war film. In some ways better and in some worse. The best parts of this movie were when it was focusing on your main protagonist played by Jack O'Connell and showing the different emotions he was going through. You really get o see how certain experiences damaged or changed him and forced him to find ways to survive. This powerful performance is why i liked the first half of this movie more than the second, after the soldier gets lost in Belfast i felt that the film focused a little too much on the secondary characters. They just weren't as well developed and interesting to keep me invested. The second half although did have some intense edge-of-seat moments that helped me get through it. The main downside of this film is that the plot really wasn't all that interesting, it tries to engage you by setting up multiple characters, some of which have ulterior motives but none of them except for a young boy were that interesting. There was some shaky cam in this movie also that at some times was effective but at other times felt a little annoying and unnecessary. This film was a little bit of a disappointment for me after hearing so many good things about it. Despite the let down with the plot the performance by Jack O'Connell will still get you through the movie just enough to be able to enjoy it. - 6

Much to his surprise, a young, inexperienced British soldier, Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell), is posted to Northern Ireland (he is expecting to be sent to Germany). It is the time of the Troubles and he and his fellow squaddies are plunged immediately into a bewildering maelstrom of rioting and factional violence on the mean streets of Belfast. During a brutal melee, Hook becomes separated from his unit. From that moment on, he is a marked man . . . The main action takes place among half-derelict streets and soulless concrete blocks of 'social' housing, all washed with rain and lit by the eerie glow of neon street-lights. A chilling sense of menace pervades this desolate landscape as shadowy figures go about their deadly business. No one is safe in this world, a world in which disputes are contested primarily with the hand-gun, the bomb and the expedient deal. Even, perhaps especially, the forces of law-and-order are not what they seem - as Hook learns to his cost. In this well-crafted and beautifully photographed movie, O'Connell is outstanding as Hook, the infantry's innocent abroad. For much of the time he says little or nothing, but, as his pursuers close in, we still experience every moment of his fear, shock and disorientation with profound intensity. Physical pain is powerfully portrayed during a scene in which his wounds are stitched without the benefit of anaesthetic, an exceptional gut-wrenching sequence. Corey McKinley also gives a superb performance as the Loyalist boy who is already a man, hardened to a life of urban strife. Indeed, the acting overall can hardly be faulted. The camera-work is also quite brilliant; for example, as Hook staggers and stumbles through the streets the camera staggers and stumbles with him, carrying us right into the action. Everything combines to yield an absolutely convincing depiction of human lives reduced to something 'nasty, brutish and short.' A weakness of this movie is that by the end it is difficult to be sure of precisely who has done what to whom and why. Art has perhaps mirrored the complexity and sheer opaqueness of sectarian politics a little too closely. But this does not detract from the overall quality of the viewing experience and the tremendous emotional charge that it delivers. Highly recommended. (Viewed at Screen 3, The Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK on 19th October 2014)