This scary, funny, painful, riveting drama shows one woman's fight against hatred and violence in her community. It recreates what it must be like to live in a war zone. Bursts of violence regularly interrupt daily life. Any time the camera shows children playing or women shopping, there's an agonizing sense that a car bomb might go off or they'll get caught in cross-fire. There's considerable profanity, too, quite intelligible despite the accents.
Characters also drink, smoke, and pop Valium like candy to settle their nerves.
Julie Walters plays Bernie McPhelimy, a Catholic mother living in a housing development in West Belfast, where daily and nightly gunplay between IRA gunmen and British troops has made life miserable. She and a friend begin a petition drive to tell the IRA to stop the neighborhood shootings. Plain-spoken and stubborn, Bernie becomes quite a celebrity. Her life is threatened, and her kids are ostracized.