It’s like being on the battleground. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
While leaders, politicians, and generals can discuss their various reasons for going to war, it’s someone else that’s going to get blood on their hands. The chain of command exists for a reason but what happens when you’re stranded behind enemy lines and have to fight for your own survival in hostile territory?
Ultimately, things turn into a clusterfuck where anyone – soldier or civilian – will do anything to survive.
On that note, Yann Demange’s remarkable debut ’71 is still one of the most powerful war films in recent memory because it doesn’t give a damn about politics, it’s simply an incredibly tense, thrilling and claustrophobic tale of a British soldier that’s stranded in Belfast at the height of The Troubles.
The film, set in the year 1971, follows Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell), one of a number of young English soldiers who are sent to keep the peace on the streets of Belfast.
Clueless about the politics of The Troubles, surrounded by escalating tensions and totally ill-served by his commanding officers, Hook is left to fend for himself in an unfamiliar, unforgiving city after a routine house search descends into a chaotic riot and he is separated from the rest of his unit.
Unable to tell friend from foe, and increasingly wary of his own comrades, he must survive the night alone and find his way to safety through a disorientating, alien and deadly landscape.
As night comes down and the soldier attempts get back to the army base, Hook’s disorientating odyssey brings him into contact with Unionist and Republican paramilitary units, as well duplicitous forces stoking the flames of conflict, waging their own dirty war.
Since coming to the world’s attention as the hard-living James Cook on the E4 teen series Skins, O’Connell has always been an actor of considerable substance as seen by his brilliant turn in Starred Up.
In ’71, he commands the screen throughout but Demange’s direction is unlike anything that you’ve seen in a traditional war film. Yes, bullets fly and bombs explode, but there’s a real sense of claustrophobia, danger, and tension with every passing minute.
Since being released in 2014, ’71 has received a huge array of awards nominations – Demange won the Best Director gong at the British Independent Film Awards.
At present, the film has 95% Rotten Tomatoes score and it’s a critical darling.
NY Times – “Mr. O’Connell runs away with ” ’71,” in which his character’s every emotional, psychological and physical hurdle makes for kinetic cinema.”
Variety – “The Troubles have rarely been more troubling onscreen than they are in ’71, a vivid, shivery survival thriller that turns the red-brick residential streets of Belfast into a war zone of unconscionable peril.”
3AW – “Outstanding, tense, nail-biting thriller set in the cauldron of violence and deprivation that was Belfast in 1971…director Yann Demange stages some vivid sequences and knows how to escalate tension to breaking point.”
’71 airs on Tuesday night on Film4 at 11.50pm.
If you’ve got any fingernails left after Sorcerer on Friday, may we recommend ‘71, tomorrow at 11.50pm? Jack O’Connell is a young British soldier accidentally left behind on the streets of Belfast during The Troubles. pic.twitter.com/V2AhWjneai
— Film4 (@Film4) February 5, 2018
