Charts the story of British Black and Tan occupation and the chaos that follows.

Rating: 7/10 (30 July 2006)

A mainstream cinema film on the Irish conflict has been a rarity up until now and with good reason. I can't help but feel that this film, had it been released ten or even five years ago, would have either compounded people's anger or been used for political capital. Now, with the troubles dwindling to an end, with the IRA more or less finished and with the issue well out of the general news, the coast was more or less clear to release a film about Ireland in the early twenties. That said, the fact that only thirty cinemas wished to show it in the UK due to its political content, conveys the fact that many still perceive the situation as tentative. This is the wrong stance to take in my opinion. Films such as these show that the Brits and the Irish consider these days to be history and that they are not afraid to talk about what went on. Being overly sensitive as to what people might feel hampers a long and complicated recovery process.
The film opens with a display of the brutal Black and Tan occupation. Even if you're a die hard nationalistic Brit, you can't help but feel for the Irish men and women and what they went through. A game of Gaelic football is regarded as a public meeting and therefore expressly prohibited by the Black and Tans. When one takes place they therefore respond by getting some of the players against a wall and ordering them to strip. When one 17 year-old refuses, he is bayoneted in a chicken coop. It is this disregard for human life that gets one to naturally side with the Irish during this part of the film and it led to a few English men and women next to me in the cinema joining in during the several Irish folk song interludes.
The film is not entirely sympathetic with the Irish however. A British soldier, played by the same guy as the monk in the third series of the Peep Show, says to an Irish prisoner that he was only sent by his government and then proceeds to describe the pain of the First World War in a fit of anger. It was refreshing to see that the script writers realised that not everything was black and white back then, or I suppose you could say, black and tan.
The film also displays a fascinating perspective on Winston Churchill. The man who we admire as our ultimate war hero, and the man whom we voted our greatest Briton, was in fact behind the sending in of the Black and Tans, in my opinion, one of our nation's darkest hours.
The Irish put up a very hard fought resistance to the Black and Tans and eventually force them out. The civil strife that follows however is frighteningly vivid. The changing of attitudes is depicted very well and movingly by brothers Teddy (Padraic Delaney) and Damien (Cillian Murphy). Both these actors put in excellent performances.
Overall, it is a very good film. A must see for anyone interested in the period or in the conflict in general, but one should perhaps be warned that the violence can at times be intense. My father's father was a young boy in Ireland when the Black and Tans came in and for my father, the film sometimes got a bit too much.