BRITISH TROOPS COPE WITH THE IRA IN THE FILM ‘71
Seemingly based on a true story, the film ’71 depicts how fictional Gary Hook (played by Jack O’Donnell), a rookie British soldier, is dispatched to Belfast, receives orders to quell a riot through an amateurish operation, but is accidentally isolated from the rest of his unit, discovered on a street in a state of exhaustion by a friendly Catholic medic, and tries to escape when he realizes that he might soon be hunted down by IRA leaders. The movie features a map of a small Catholic enclave within a larger Protestant city. (The British unit was originally sent to protect Catholics from hostile Protestants.) A British commander briefs his unit that traditional IRA are being challenged by more radical elements. The riot consists of burning, explosions, gunfire, rockthrowing, and yelling by Catholics, evidently enraged by the form of the British crackdown—brutally invading homes to search for IRA radicals and weapons. Factions within the IRA are exposed, and undercover members of the British military seem eager to treat the Catholics like dogs. Those who are aggressive seem brainwashed into a we-they frame of mind, and they view neutrality between the two sides with suspicion. Director Yann Demange offers a picture of the chaos of 1971, presumably to tell those in Britain and Northern Ireland that they should be grateful for living in peace today. However, the dialog is carried on in an accent difficult for American ears to understand, and the moral that peaceful methods for conflict resolution should have been tried is unclear. MH