ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

beorhhouse I give this anti-war gem 9 stars even though the various groups were not delineated enough to maintain clarity. The British Secret Service, I think, was involved as well as the IRA and the PIRA and supporters as well as the UDA, the RUC, and the British Army. I have friends in Belfast. I never visited, but I did spend time in Derry, and I lived in Armagh. My plans were to visit Omagh, but I left Ireland instead, missing the bombing by just a week or so (1998). This film shows, above all, humanity in the face of fearful hatred of 'the other.'

James "71" is under the direction of Frenchman Yann Demange, and that is only the right and proper distance from the subject, given the circumstances. But to achieve the level of insight that is on show here is no mean feat for "a foreigner", even if writer Gregory Burke presumably helped out with this.In contrast, I (like pretty much any British person beyond a certain age) came to this film as someone who has little distance to offer, above all as someone who sees the ordinary British soldier - the squaddie, the poor bloody infantryman from the shires (in the case of Jack O'Connell and his character Gary Hook that's Derbyshire) - as a genuine hero in every sense of the world. And that would hold true whether its the Alma or Waterloo, or World War I or the Falklands we're talking about. Happily, the film agrees with me on this (or I would have found it difficult to get very far with it), while it also reminds us at the outset, that - county regiment as this may "only" be - these are still the best and most professional and most-disciplined (which here also means superbly self-restrained) soldiers to be found anywhere. Trying to perform decently in impossible circumstances has been the lot of the British soldier for many a long year, but coming as close to this ideal as humanly possibly, the lads have won the respect of a great many of us.Officers and special forces or intelligence types get less favourable treatment here, and I can quite allow that, and all the more so given the bleak picture painted of "Loyalists" and Republicans alike, who are seen turning on their own (almost as much as each other) repeatedly and without hesitation.Indeed, given that (as the film reminds us several times), everybody here is also within the United Kingdom context, at some level everybody is turning on their own, as several surprisingly touching and affecting moments of regret at killing in the film make clear.To add to those nuances, there are even glimpses here of people trying to get on with semi-normal lives above and beyond the sectarianism. War zone this may be, but it has kids and schools and TV and some kind of normalised future within reach, as opposed to the slide into more and more of those "Troubles" that 1971 actually denoted.Ultimately the whole piece is then a tragedy, as was the real-life situation, but what this film achieves in concise storytelling is little short of miraculous. How to give the essence of that complex and miserable story by referring to the events of not much more than one day? One might have thought it could not be done, but the makers of "71" achieve it.There is not much fun to be had from this film, but its level of understanding and layered complexity is superb.Thank God we have a peace now, if a tenuous one, and most prices are worth paying to keep that. To realise what could conceivably again be lost, a look at "71" is enough of a reminder of awful times, primitive times, that do indeed need to be consigned to history.Watch "71" for all of these reasons, but also marvel at the art of those who made it.

magnuslhad In the early days of The Troubles, a group of young soldiers are sent to support an RUC search for weapons. The situation spirals out of control, and one greenhorn ends up separated from his comrades and gets left behind. There then follows a long night in Belfast, as SAS, young Provos, UVF and senior IRA men all come across the soldier and try to manipulate him for their own agenda. "We take care of our own," say senior officers, but the film shows the truth to be anything but. This is a low-budget film that does an excellent job of exceeding its fiscal limitations to fashion a taught, gritty thriller. In essence it is one long chase movie on foot, but it never flags, and all dialogue and period detail is plausibly authentic. I would have liked to know more about the soldier, to be more emotionally invested in his character. There is a relationship with a younger brother that bookends the film, but it is an under-developed part of the story. A tale of one man's fight against horrible odds, and no knowledge of Ulster's history is required to enjoy this. The folly of war, and man's cruelty to man vividly dissected.

jc-osms This British-made film was a tense, frightening but ultimately unbelievable watch. The story line is very simple, a young English soldier is pitched into Belfast at the height of the Troubles in 1971 and gets separated from his colleagues while they try to defuse a riot in the Catholic area of town. After a fellow-soldier he tries to assist is ruthlessly shot in the face and killed by a young Nationalist, he runs for his life ending up he knows not where, only that he's lost, in great danger at every turn and must get back safely to his company or risk the same fate as his mate.The sense of realism is palpable and you almost feel like you're watching an old TV newsreel of old, so true to life do the events seem. Most nights back in the early 70's, atrocities like this filled the evening news, so much so that they became less than shocking to so commonplace did they become. Belfast at the time was a divided city right down the Shanklands Road fault line, with young militants coming to the fore, feeling big with a gun in their hand, thinking themselves almost untouchable as they dispensed summary justice if that's the right phrase to young men doing their job, not much older than them and with no real feeling for the political issues of the day. Of course the Provisional IRA saw the British Army as an occupying force and so declared war on them, with the soldiers unable to take any sort of official retaliatory action. Where the film is very good is in its depiction of Belfast as a war-torn city. You share Jack O'Connell's young soldier's sense of displacement and rising terror as he tries to get back to base but bumps into various people who he doesn't know are friend or foe. Behind the scenes, the local police chief will do little to help the search and he and his second-in-command care nothing for the missing soldier's welfare. Corrupt and above the law, they're little different from the callous, cold-blooded gang they're pursuing.Although the action is gripping and gritty, I think the film took too much cinematic licence with the drama shown here, never more so than in the last-gasp rescue just when it seemed his luck had ran out, while some of the supporting characters seemed just too stereotypical, for example the young Loyalist boy who swears like a trooper and gives orders like he's the supremo rather than being his uncle's nephew. Later McConnell encounters a Protestant bomb team who bungle their task with devastating effects, a retired Protestant man and his teenage daughter who take him in and tend to his wounds and of course the young Catholic gang out for his blood.Strikingly realistic and unflinching in its depiction of violence, the film makes no judgement on the characters on both sides of the argument. There's not much political debate, just an "us and them" mentality fuelled by bloodlust and inbred hatred of the other side purely on religious grounds.This film was at times hard to watch as the scared and scarred soldier tries to make his escape through the sprawling housing estate at dead of night, but while the depiction was super-real, I just wasn't quite convinced that the events played out here could have actually occurred, especially with the cinematic licence taken at the climax. Nevertheless, it was extremely well acted and tellingly evocative of its time, it certainly brought back unwelcome memories of a terrible time one can only hope Northern Ireland has put behind it for good.