Image: Crab Apple Films

In his first feature film as a director, Yann Demange has created an intense thrill ride through the hellish urban heart of Belfast during The Troubles of the early 1970’s. With its frenetic, handheld style, ‘71 is reminiscent of Paul Greengrass-directed thrillers and (most pertinently) his Ireland-set drama; Bloody Sunday.

This comparison unfortunately does ‘71 no favours. Whilst Bloody Sunday was unafraid to tackle the larger issues behind the nightmarish events of the era, ‘71 ignores them, instead keeping the focus on the protagonist: rookie soldier Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell). Although this gives O’Connell the opportunity to continue his winning streak from last year’s Starred Up with a powerful, physical performance, it ensures that many of the characters are thinly drawn, somewhat limiting our empathy for their nightmarish day-to-day existence.

Worse, whilst still willing to put the horrific violence of The Troubles on screen, the film pins the majority of the blame not on the warring republicans and unionists, or on the ineffectual military leadership but instead on a group of vaguely Machiavellian military intelligence officers, thereby pulling its most powerful punch. Exploitation cinema has never been shy about commenting on the most heated political issues of its time so for ‘71 to avoid controversy entirely is a bizarre decision.

‘71 does succeed excellently as an intense thriller and some respect must be given to the filmmakers for ignoring the political undercurrents of their setting. However, this decision to unflinchingly show one of the darkest chapters in British history without asking any of the tough questions means that ‘71 is only good rather than great.

Peter Brearley