'71 | |
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![]() UK release poster | |
Directed by | Yann Demange |
Written by | Gregory Burke |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Tat Radcliffe |
Edited by | Chris Wyatt |
Music by | David Holmes |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | StudioCanal |
Release dates |
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Running time | 99 minutes [2] |
Country | United Kingdom [1] |
Language | English |
Budget | £8.1 million [3] |
Box office | $3.1 million [4] |
'71 is a 2014 British thriller film [1] directed by Yann Demange (in his feature directorial debut) and written by Gregory Burke. Set in Northern Ireland, it stars Jack O'Connell, Sean Harris, David Wilmot, Richard Dormer, Paul Anderson and Charlie Murphy, and tells the fictional story of a British soldier who becomes separated from his unit during a riot in Belfast at the height of the Troubles in 1971. Filming began on location in Blackburn, Lancashire, in April 2013 and continued in Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool. [5] The film was funded by the British Film Institute, Film4, Creative Scotland and Screen Yorkshire, [6] and had its premiere in the competition section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, held in February 2014, [7] [8] where it was particularly praised for O'Connell's performance and Demange's direction.
Gary Hook, a new recruit to the British Army, is sent to Belfast in 1971 during the early years of the Troubles. Under the leadership of the inexperienced Second Lieutenant Armitage, his platoon is deployed without protective gear to a volatile area where Irish Catholics (largely Republicans) and Ulster Protestants (largely Loyalists) live side by side. The unit provides support for the Royal Ulster Constabulary as it inspects homes for firearms, shocking Hook with their rough treatment of Catholic civilians. A crowd gathers to protest against the search; the soldiers, who were ordered to leave riot gear behind, are ordered to keep the crowd back, but the latter turn violent when they witness the RUC beating homeowners in the street.
One soldier is hit by a rock and drops his L1A1 rifle to the ground. In the confusion, a young boy seizes it and runs off through the mob. Hook and another soldier, Thompson, pursue him. As the crowd's protest escalates, the soldiers and police pull out, leaving the two soldiers behind. Hook and Thompson are severely beaten and disarmed by a mob, until a sympathetic woman manages to calm things down. However, Thompson is suddenly shot dead at point-blank range by a Provisional IRA gunman, Paul Haggerty. Hook flees through streets and back alleys and hides in an outhouse until dark.
After Hook leaves, he wanders into the Shankill Estate. A foul-mouthed Protestant youngster takes Hook to a local pub that serves as a front for Loyalists. There, Hook glimpses a Loyalist group in a back room constructing a bomb under the guidance of Sergeant Lewis, a member of the Military Reaction Force (MRF), the British Army's covert counter-insurgency unit. Hook steps outside the pub just before an enormous explosion destroys the building, killing or injuring many of those inside, including the young boy who brought him there. Unaware that the Loyalist bombers have blown themselves up accidentally, the Provisional IRA and Official IRA factions accuse each other of being responsible for the bombing.
Hook staggers away and again gets lost in the streets, eventually collapsing. Two Catholics, Eamon and his daughter Brigid, discover him as he lies in a street unconscious and injured by shrapnel. They take him to their home in the Divis Flats. Eamon, a former army medic, stitches Hook's wounds. Despite the Provisional IRA having recently taken control of the area from the OIRA, Eamon contacts senior OIRA officer Boyle for help, expecting a more humane solution than the Provisional IRA faction would allow. Boyle, less radical and violent than the younger Provisional IRA members, tells Captain Browning, leader of the local MRF section, of Hook's whereabouts and asks in return that Browning kill James Quinn, a key leader of the younger Provisional IRA faction.
Quinn and his squad have tailed Boyle since the pub explosion and saw him visit Eamon's flat without knowing why he was there. Sensing danger, Hook flees the flat, taking a large knife he finds in a bag. Hook eludes Quinn's men but, unable to evade Haggerty, stabs and kills him. Quinn's group captures Hook and takes him to a hideout. Quinn orders Sean, the young boy who, in the early neighbourhood persecution, had hesitated to kill Hook, to murder him. When Sean hesitates, Quinn prepares to execute Hook, only to leave when Browning's group arrives. Sergeant Lewis of Browning's group shoots Sean, to Hook's horror. Lewis then attempts to strangle Hook to prevent him from informing others about the bomb. As Lieutenant Armitage and his men enter in support of Browning, Armitage sees Lewis's attempt to kill Hook. Sean, having survived the first shot, raises himself and shoots Lewis dead, before being shot again, this time fatally by Armitage. Browning finds Quinn and, rather than arresting or executing him, tells him Boyle wants him dead and needs to be dealt with. As Quinn leaves, Browning tells him he will be in touch soon.
Hook is returned to his barracks. Later, despite a formal complaint by Armitage, the commanding officer dismisses the incident involving Hook, Lewis and Sean as 'a confused situation' that merits no further inquiry. Hook returns to England, throwing his dog tags from the ferry, and is reunited with his younger brother.
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 96% of 138 surveyed critics have given the film a positive review; the average rating is 7.80/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Powerfully directed and acted, '71 stays true to its fact-based origins while remaining as gripping as any solidly crafted action thriller." [9] On Metacritic it has a score of 83 out of 100 based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". [10]
Writing for the Los Angeles Times , Kenneth Turan called '71 "a tense thriller from Britain that so adroitly joins physical intensity, emotional authenticity and political acuity that you may find yourself forgetting to take a breath." [11] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times singled out Jack O'Connell for praise, saying, "Mr. O'Connell runs away with '71, in which his character's every emotional, psychological and physical hurdle makes for kinetic cinema." [12] The Hollywood Reporter critic Leslie Felperin noted of Yann Demange's direction, "A big part of [Demange's] achievement resides in the casting of such a veteran crew of character actors in the first place, but credit is due for coaxing such subtle performances." [13] Jonathan Romney in Film Comment praised the originality of the film, "a rare hybrid between hard-nosed realism, on the cusp of a quasi-documentary style, and genre thriller-adventure", while criticising the opening and closing scenes as conventional. [14]
'71 won Best Director at the 2014 British Independent Film Awards, [15] after receiving nine nominations. [16]
The National Board of Review named '71 one of the top 10 independent films of 2015. [17]
Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipients | Result |
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British Independent Film Awards [18] | 7 December 2014 | Best British Independent Film | '71 | Nominated |
Best Director | Yann Demange | Won | ||
Best Actor | Jack O'Connell | Nominated | ||
Best Supporting Actor | Sean Harris | Nominated | ||
Best Screenplay | Gregory Burke | Nominated | ||
Best Technical Achievement | Chris Wyatt (Editing) | Nominated | ||
Tat Radcliffe (Cinematography) | Nominated | |||
Best Achievement in Production | '71 | Nominated | ||
The Douglas Hickox Award for Debut Director | Yann Demange | Nominated |
The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an "irregular war" or "low-level war". The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.
The Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA was an Irish republican paramilitary group whose goal was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a "workers' republic" encompassing all of Ireland. It emerged in December 1969, shortly after the beginning of the Troubles, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two factions. The other was the Provisional IRA. Each continued to call itself simply "the IRA" and rejected the other's legitimacy.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh was an Irish republican political and military leader. He was Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) from 1958 to 1959 and again from 1960 to 1962, president of Sinn Féin from 1970 to 1983, and president of Republican Sinn Féin from 1987 to 2009.
Events in the year 1972 in Ireland.
Events in the year 1971 in Ireland.
The Milltown Cemetery attack took place on 16 March 1988 at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the large funeral of three Provisional IRA members killed in Gibraltar, an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, Michael Stone, attacked the mourners with hand grenades and pistols. He had learned there would be no police or armed IRA members at the cemetery. As Stone then ran towards the nearby motorway, a large crowd chased him and he continued shooting and throwing grenades. Some of the crowd caught Stone and beat him, but he was rescued by the police and arrested. Three people were killed and more than 60 wounded.
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Operation Demetrius was a British Army operation in Northern Ireland on 9–10 August 1971, during the Troubles. It involved the mass arrest and internment of people suspected of being involved with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was waging an armed campaign for a united Ireland against the British state. It was proposed by the Unionist government of Northern Ireland and approved by the British Government. Armed soldiers launched dawn raids throughout Northern Ireland and arrested 342 in the initial sweep, sparking four days of violence in which 20 civilians, two IRA members and two British soldiers were killed. All of those arrested were Irish republicans and nationalists, the vast majority of them Catholics. Due to faulty and out-of-date intelligence, many were no longer involved in republican militancy or never had links with the IRA. Ulster loyalist paramilitaries were also carrying out acts of violence, which were mainly directed against Catholics and Irish nationalists, but no loyalists were included in the sweep.
Joe McCann was an Irish republican paramilitary. A member of the Irish Republican Army and later the Official Irish Republican Army, he was active in politics from the early 1960s and participated in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He was shot dead during a confrontation with RUC Special Branch members and British paratroopers in 1972.
Daniel McCann was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who was shot dead by the British Army on 6 March 1988 whilst being accused of attempting to plant a car bomb in Gibraltar.
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Yann Demange is a French film and television director of French and Algerian descent, who grew up in London. After directing the well-received television series Dead Set (2008) and Top Boy (2011), he made his directorial film debut with the critically acclaimed independent film '71 (2014), for which he received the British Independent Film Award for Best Director.