Movie Reviews

On January 30, 1972, a group of Irish civil-rights advocates marched in protest through the city of Derry, in northern Ireland. This was not particularly unusual, as many similar marches had taken place in the past, in an effort to end the "internment" of Irish Catholics by the British. Only a few days before this particular march, however, British forces in Ireland proclaimed a flat-out ban on demonstrations and marches, presumably in large part because many young Irish "hooligans" were causing too many injuries and too much damage during these otherwise-peaceful marches. The march went ahead anyway, and things got very badly out of hand. In the end, British troops had killed 13 civilians and wounding 14 others.

Bloody Sunday is a detailed look at the events of this particular day, as seen by both sides of the altercation. Civil-rights activist Ivan Cooper struggles to organize the march in light of the announced ban by the British, as well as the difficulties involved with trying to keep the hooligans from causing unneccessary trouble in what he insists must be a peaceful march (Cooper is played by a guy named James Nesbitt. He was really good, and I'd like to see more of him in other movies). On the other side, we watch as British generals try to anticipate where the demonstrators will be going, and then set up troops to close in on groups of certain well-known hooligans to arrest them.

The best thing about this film is the style in which it is presented. It's almost a sort of 'pseudo-documentary', with constant hand-held camera-work and very realistic, unrehearsed-sounding dialogue. The fact that Bloody Sunday focuses entirely on this one particular event also allows it to convey a really strong sense of what actually happened, and how it actually played out, somewhat akin to the way Black Hawk Down showed a very clear picture of the events that occured in Mogadishu in 1993.

My biggest complaint about Bloody Sunday is perhaps not so much to do with the film itself, but more to do with my knowledge of historical events. When the movie was finished, I was pretty amazed by what I had seen of the event itself. I got a really good picture of where things were happening (for example, where a group of hooligans had started throwing rocks at British Forces) and what caused them to happen (the rock-throwing began largely in response to a British road-block that cause the march to have to re-route itself). What I didn't get, though, is the one thing I really wanted to get out of the movie -- that is, a better understanding of the history behind why these things were happening. Why was the Irish Civil Rights movement in such trouble? What, exactly, were the British actually doing in Ireland in the 70s? What did they mean by "internemtn"? More generally, I wanted to know more about the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants, and how the IRA fits into the whole situation. Unfortunately, Bloody Sunday offers little more than a few sparse details.

Another small complaint: some of the Irish characters in this film (especially some of the young teenage hooligans) had really thick accents and it was almost impossable for me to understand what they were saying. But again, I suppose that's more my problem than it is the film's problem.

This is definitely a movie I'd came back to and watch again after taking some time to learn more about the history of this particular day (which itself is actually now referred to as "Bloody Sunday"). But I still wish it had offered more than it actually did.