Phenomenal attention to detail is a big plus

Rating: 9/10 (29 January 2008)

Certainly, anything dealing with "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland will quickly create a great divide between opposing viewpoints, and obviously 'Bloody Sunday' is no exception. For the record, I am no fan of the IRA. On the other hand I am no fan of sending an attacking force into a civil disturbance as police support. History is replete with evidence that this is simply a bad idea and will likely lead to an atrocity. For this I heap far more blame at the feet of British politicians who move their army around like chess pieces rather than at the feet of the army itself. And I believe Paul Greengrass handles this as such. Brigadier Maclellan is portrayed as a thoroughly professional soldier who is very conscientious about handling the march with minimal force yet finds this insurmountable upon the arrival of Major General Ford, who seems determined to have his Paras show those pesky Republicans who's boss. The Paras themselves are an elite attacking unit. They are trained to jump from planes and kill with maximum effect, not to make sure peace marchers remain peaceful. They don't want to be there any more than the Irish Catholics want them to be there. They're not policemen. They are frustrated and angry, but they are the ones with guns, Queen and country behind them. And when told to move in, they move in with a vengeance. Again, sending an assault force into a civil insurrection is just a bad idea. The inquest that followed may have been incomplete, but with all due respect to the Parachute Regiment in an unenviable situation, it was a massacre regardless of who fired first (and again Paul Greengrass does not take sides here and make it obvious where the first shot came from). There is a huge difference between understanding why something happened and attempting to justify it.
That said, Paul Greengrass's near pathological attention to detail ceases to amaze me after multiple viewings. Having long been a student of the army in Northern Ireland, there is no fault to be found in reference to the soldiers. The flak jackets worn beneath old pattern Para smocks, the mix of maroon berets and para helmets, the wood stocks of the rifles rather than the later plastic. Paul Greengrass apparently hired ex-servicemen who had done tours in Northern Ireland, thus eliminating the need to train the cinematic soldiers to look like real soldiers. They knew the lingo, they knew how to hold their weapons, they knew how to assault. In fact, Simon Mann, the actor who plays the Para commanding officer, was once in the British Special Air Service (SAS) until 1985, and in 2004 was arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea. Many of the scenes are carbon copies of actual incidents seen in archival footage of the actual march. If you are familiar with such footage, you begin to forget you're watching a recreation.
It is a dark and cold film. It is gray and gritty. There is no dramatic score. The camera-work is often shaky. Dialogue is sometimes hard to understand. What is going on is sometimes confusing. And you know what? Life is like that sometimes, and that's what makes this film so powerful and brutally realistic.