'71

Terrific film. Heart-pounding suspense and chase thriller set in 70s Northern Ireland. A young recruit, unprepared and uninformed, finds himself thrown into a warzone and an in-fighting IRA controlled neighbourhood. Full of catholic and protestants, secret police, and the everyday people of Belfast, the film is perfect in classifying that even within the IRA, there are good and bad people (the same for the police), and it really shows, in its short runtime, how inexperienced and unskilled all parties were, fuelled by rage and unfairness, and purely wanting to kill. What a mess Northern Ireland was (and still is). There is lots of pick up on in this film. Jack O'Connell is fantastic as Private Hook. A real treat, and I look forward to seeing him in more appropriate roles in the future. First-time filmmaker, Yann Demange, does really well too.

A-

I really want to see this.

You'll come around Jack O'Connell eventually. I knew it.

He's really good here. I never hated the guy's acting. I just know that I will never like him unless he's playing hooligans or soldiers. I don't believe he has the chops to make any other role or profession believable. But we'll see.

A courageous, but inexperienced British soldier stationed in Northern Ireland fights to survive a tumultuous night in Belfast after his unit leaves him behind amidst the chaos of close-quarter combat with the Irish Republican Army and its protesting sympathizers. Such is the simple and satisfying scenario driving '71, a hard-edged and well-executed suspense film set apart by heart-pounding chase sequences, tightly cut and shot with a swirling hand-held camera and an eye for period authenticity, and an intense physical performance by rapidly rising star Jack O'Connell as Gary, the soldier behind enemy lines. Very fine as it is, the film does contain one or two clear (albeit very far from debilitating) flaws. It tries to intertwine the protagonist's straightforward, in-the-moment nocturnal adventure (the people he encounters and the perils he endures as he navigates an almost post-apocalyptic urban space) with a broader portrait of the Irish resistance and ideological division within it. This is a noble bid to blend action with historical context, but also always a bit strained and tidy in a film otherwise charged with world-in-flux, on-the-run immediacy. There are also a series of brief, quietly sentimental codas at the end, and they soften the astringent and complicated impact of the actual denouement.

In my opinion, it should have ended with the shot of O'Connell's character in the hallway: alive, but wounded, dejected, disbelieved by his superiors, and more than a bit unsure of his place in the world. This ending would have bite. We could just assume he returns home to his brother.

B+