A good film almost done in by it's idiotic stylistic quirks

Rating: 7/10 (12 August 2017)

Paul Greengrass directs this dramatization of the civil rights march that ended with British paratroopers killing 13 civilians, kicking off the long and bloody civil war that engulfed Northern Ireland for the next 30 years. Greengrass manages to do justice to the events despite his terrible visual style that involves an insanely shaky camera and hundreds of pointless jagged edits. This is largely chalked up to "documentary realism", but no documentarian would be happy with a film that consciously draws attention to it's own stylistic quirks and away from the events depicted in the film. James Nesbitt stars as Ivan Cooper, a politician who organized the march and bore witness to much of the slaughter. He does a magnificent job of depicting hope and optimism dying.