Hats off to Jack O'Connell for his portrayal of 'lost' soldier Gary Hook. Given that most of what he had to do was in silence, his character came across as fully fleshed out and recognisable as a human trapped in a dire situation far from his own making and far from being the result of his choices.
The movie, on the other hand, is not so clear cut and understandable.
As someone who grew up on the streets the film purports to portray (no, it was never like that) I may claim some limited authority here with regard to what the film claims to represent. And what it represents is a very stylised and considerably manufactured view of what 'the Troubles' were like. Back when I was a kid, I frequently heard the sounds of bombs exploding; more frequently the crack of rifle bullets and assorted small arms being discharged as well as (what I always thought the be the worst of all) the results of indiscriminate beatings and maimings carried out by those on the same side of the divide. It was my people who invented 'kneecapping' and we got pretty damned good at it too. Pity it was usually against our own.
However, what this film fails to show (because, if it did, there would be no story) is that Belfast was a city under total surveillance by the Army and/or the RUC, 24/7/365. Every few hundred metres there was a checkpoint of some kind or another. If a person needed assistance, raising a hand would do it. There was no running through badly lit back streets, no hiding out in abandoned terraced houses, no wandering empty streets in the dead of night (Man! Belfast was, is and always will be one of the most bustling cities you'll find anywhere in the world. People are out on the streets both day and night - even during the very height of the Troubles.) Oh, and we also had public telephones on the street corners.
What I'm saying is, this film really needed to have done more research. As others have said, it did not need to be set in Belfast in 1971. The themes in this movie could just as easily have been represented as 'Die Hard 912', 'The Equalizer 48' or 'John Wick - This Time You Killed my Cat' set in a hospital, an airport, or the streets of Boston. The shoot outs at the end of the film prove that. It may as well have been the OK Corrall. That's a pity because there is an important story to be told about life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles but this is not it. For now, the great work on this period in history remains Alan Clarke/Danny Boyle's 1989 triumph 'Elephant'. Watch that if you really want to know something about NI during the 1970's, not '71'.
The movie, on the other hand, is not so clear cut and understandable.
As someone who grew up on the streets the film purports to portray (no, it was never like that) I may claim some limited authority here with regard to what the film claims to represent. And what it represents is a very stylised and considerably manufactured view of what 'the Troubles' were like. Back when I was a kid, I frequently heard the sounds of bombs exploding; more frequently the crack of rifle bullets and assorted small arms being discharged as well as (what I always thought the be the worst of all) the results of indiscriminate beatings and maimings carried out by those on the same side of the divide. It was my people who invented 'kneecapping' and we got pretty damned good at it too. Pity it was usually against our own.
However, what this film fails to show (because, if it did, there would be no story) is that Belfast was a city under total surveillance by the Army and/or the RUC, 24/7/365. Every few hundred metres there was a checkpoint of some kind or another. If a person needed assistance, raising a hand would do it. There was no running through badly lit back streets, no hiding out in abandoned terraced houses, no wandering empty streets in the dead of night (Man! Belfast was, is and always will be one of the most bustling cities you'll find anywhere in the world. People are out on the streets both day and night - even during the very height of the Troubles.) Oh, and we also had public telephones on the street corners.
What I'm saying is, this film really needed to have done more research. As others have said, it did not need to be set in Belfast in 1971. The themes in this movie could just as easily have been represented as 'Die Hard 912', 'The Equalizer 48' or 'John Wick - This Time You Killed my Cat' set in a hospital, an airport, or the streets of Boston. The shoot outs at the end of the film prove that. It may as well have been the OK Corrall. That's a pity because there is an important story to be told about life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles but this is not it. For now, the great work on this period in history remains Alan Clarke/Danny Boyle's 1989 triumph 'Elephant'. Watch that if you really want to know something about NI during the 1970's, not '71'.