New recruit Gary Hook finds his battalion shipped to Northern Ireland in the Autumn of 1971 . Bidding farewell to his brother who is in care Gary promises him he'll stay safe . However on his first call out in Belfast he finds himself trapped in a republican ghetto . As events unfold he comes across an undercover Military Reaction Force ( MRF ) and they decide Gary might have seen too much for him to be allowed to live
Sorry if I've perhaps given away too much in that plot summary but there is something a little bit misleading about the marketing campaign of this movie . Watching the trailer I instantly had this nailed as a reworking of Anabasis by Greek writer Xenophon from a couple of thousand years ago and which Walter Hill made a career out of reworking via films like THE WARRIORS . For a segment there is an aspect of this to '71 but that's not the whole story and is effectively a conspiracy thriller rather than a straightforward one about a man trapped behind enemy lines
This is a pity because the thriller elements work superbly and my fingernails were much shorter after I left the cinema than they were when I went in . There was also a scene that literally caused me to jump out of my seat and you'll know the scene I'm talking about when you see this movie . You can see why critics and many of the comments on this page are raving about this movie . It's a low budget thriller made by a first time director Yann Demange and yet has great commercial appeal and to coin cinematic cliché had this audience member held in a vice like grip
Where the film doesn't work so well is the conspiracy line in " conspiracy thriller " . Gary you see might have seen something so the MRF unit led by Captain Browning have to get rid of him . Browning it seems has his fingers in every paramilitary pie in Belfast and uses his connections in the republican heartland to find and eliminate Gary . This is the film's major failing - we just have to accept Browning's collusion with all sides and yet there's no logic and motivation for having him to do this . Some people might say it's not beyond the realms of impossibility for military intelligence to have done this in real life but the problem with documenting the Troubles is that rumour , hearsay and myth quickly becomes if not accepted fact then a repeated meme that will never go away . There's also another fault to the plotting where Gary escapes the nationalist Falls Road , finds himself in the loyalist Shankill and because of a plot twist finds himself back in the Falls Road again . In reality there's only a distance of half a mile between the two locations but it's highly unlikely in the era it's set Gary wouldn't have bumped in to an Army or RUC patrol . The implausibility is compounded that the film draws attention to the fact that entrances to these tribal enclaves are guarded by paramilitaries
This is a pity because everything else about the film works brilliantly . It has a great sense of time and place and it's only going on to Wikipedia that I found out the notorious Divis flats area no longer exists . I was willing to bet my life that the pivotal heart stopping scene towards the end was shot there on location . The cast are uniformly superb especially the prolific and constantly overlooked Sean Harris as Browning . It also makes a point now long forgotten that the Official and Provisional wings of the IRA were far from allies . That said bare in mind this is still a fictional work and not a documentary
In summary this might well be the very best film to feature The Troubles , a subject that has never lent itself to satisfying cinema . It's underlying problem is that it tries to be a little bit too complex and bring in a major subplot about the murky world of army spooks when in fact the story might have actually worked better by keeping faith in the premise of a British soldier lost in West Belfast in 1971 and it's this that stops the film becoming something of an instant classic it's being heralded as from some quarters . Nevertheless I give it 8/10
Sorry if I've perhaps given away too much in that plot summary but there is something a little bit misleading about the marketing campaign of this movie . Watching the trailer I instantly had this nailed as a reworking of Anabasis by Greek writer Xenophon from a couple of thousand years ago and which Walter Hill made a career out of reworking via films like THE WARRIORS . For a segment there is an aspect of this to '71 but that's not the whole story and is effectively a conspiracy thriller rather than a straightforward one about a man trapped behind enemy lines
This is a pity because the thriller elements work superbly and my fingernails were much shorter after I left the cinema than they were when I went in . There was also a scene that literally caused me to jump out of my seat and you'll know the scene I'm talking about when you see this movie . You can see why critics and many of the comments on this page are raving about this movie . It's a low budget thriller made by a first time director Yann Demange and yet has great commercial appeal and to coin cinematic cliché had this audience member held in a vice like grip
Where the film doesn't work so well is the conspiracy line in " conspiracy thriller " . Gary you see might have seen something so the MRF unit led by Captain Browning have to get rid of him . Browning it seems has his fingers in every paramilitary pie in Belfast and uses his connections in the republican heartland to find and eliminate Gary . This is the film's major failing - we just have to accept Browning's collusion with all sides and yet there's no logic and motivation for having him to do this . Some people might say it's not beyond the realms of impossibility for military intelligence to have done this in real life but the problem with documenting the Troubles is that rumour , hearsay and myth quickly becomes if not accepted fact then a repeated meme that will never go away . There's also another fault to the plotting where Gary escapes the nationalist Falls Road , finds himself in the loyalist Shankill and because of a plot twist finds himself back in the Falls Road again . In reality there's only a distance of half a mile between the two locations but it's highly unlikely in the era it's set Gary wouldn't have bumped in to an Army or RUC patrol . The implausibility is compounded that the film draws attention to the fact that entrances to these tribal enclaves are guarded by paramilitaries
This is a pity because everything else about the film works brilliantly . It has a great sense of time and place and it's only going on to Wikipedia that I found out the notorious Divis flats area no longer exists . I was willing to bet my life that the pivotal heart stopping scene towards the end was shot there on location . The cast are uniformly superb especially the prolific and constantly overlooked Sean Harris as Browning . It also makes a point now long forgotten that the Official and Provisional wings of the IRA were far from allies . That said bare in mind this is still a fictional work and not a documentary
In summary this might well be the very best film to feature The Troubles , a subject that has never lent itself to satisfying cinema . It's underlying problem is that it tries to be a little bit too complex and bring in a major subplot about the murky world of army spooks when in fact the story might have actually worked better by keeping faith in the premise of a British soldier lost in West Belfast in 1971 and it's this that stops the film becoming something of an instant classic it's being heralded as from some quarters . Nevertheless I give it 8/10