A masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 2007)

I watched this film yesterday. Twice. I feel sure that many "british" people will take one look at the summary on the dust jacket and see red. Todays population remember the IRA of the 70's, 80's and early 90's as the criminalised murderers they undoubtedly became, but this film deals with the emergence of a guerilla army committed to ridding their soil of a foreign occupying power. US. The British!! The people who could have remembered such a time are long dead, and I think it is very important that we are reminded by such great films as this, of a time when we had just finished 'the war to end all wars', and many of the men who had survived the appalling carnage in France were suddenly posted to Ireland, where they continued to vent many of their prejudices and frustrations on an undeserving populus. The acting is stupendous. The realistic way in which many of the scenes are portrayed and dialogue delivered REALLY makes you feel like an observer rather than a viewer. The ugly brutality with which we tried to subjugate the Irish is more than enough reason for the physical backlash, and the arms length political machinations going on in the background are more than reminiscent of todays governments handling of the events in the Middle East. Absolutely fantastic. I WILL be forcing one of my bigoted friends to sit and watch it in the earnest hope that a little light is shed onto a subject which, in our lifetimes, became more criminal than political, and in doing so might give him a bit of perspective.