FILM REVIEW: Bloody Sunday
© A.J. Malouin 2010
(Rating: 3 by The MovieMan. See our side-bar page “How We Rate Movies”)
(2002/UK/Ireland. Written and directed by Paul Greengrass.)
On Sunday afternoon, 31 January 1972, a huge group of demonstrators led by Ivan Cooper planned to carry out a totally peaceful civil rights march in Londonderry, Ireland, to protest unlawful internment by the occupying British forces.
Unfortunately, the Protestant versus Catholic factions, the influence of the IRA, and the overwhelming presence of British troops all combined to turn what could have been a peaceful demonstration into a British massacre in which 13 unarmed civilians were murdered, and another 14 were seriously wounded.
“Bloody Sunday” tells the story of how this unnecessary tragedy became unavoidable.
The film is delivered in a riveting news-story style. We are audience are always in the first row of the Press Conferences. We are always the fourth or fifth person into the briefings of the British occupational forces. We are the third person within the intimate planning conversations of Ivan Cooper and his first lieutenant. We are in the British APC as it heads toward the barricades. And we are inside the intimate conversations behind nine-foot-high walls as the British soldiers discuss how they are going to deal with the Londonderry residents from whom they have had enough of being spat upon and shot at.
The British Army’s objective on 31 January was to lift 200-300 Hooligans off the streets of Londonderry. The Army distributed photographs of these key insurgent players, and had a plan to sweep them up. “And if the shooting starts, we’ll shoot back” was a foremost thought in all the briefings.
The objective of Ivan Cooper was to stage a peaceful civil rights march.
In order to minimize confrontation, Cooper changed the route of the march when he saw the mass of the British forces planted against his original route. At a critical moment, however, hundreds of marchers turned off the revised route and marched straight into the teeth of a highly armored, frustrated, and anxious British occupying army. Taunts and bricks and tear gas and pushing confrontations inevitably turned into gunfire against the unarmed population.
In the aftermath of the massacre, a British Officer intones, “We’ve just fired a fucking horrendous amount of ammunition and we’ve got to know *why*!” Barricades are searched in vain for weapons dropped by the marching civilians. Many British soldiers are interrogated about why they opened fire in the face of no real threat to their safety, but no action is ever brought against a single one of them. The film reports, further, that the British Officers who planned and led the operation in Londonderry on Sunday, 31 January 972 were later decorated by The Queen.
Meanwhile, U2 sings an extended version of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” over the credits and into the black empty screen beyond the credits.
“Bloody Sunday” is an effectively riveting demonstration of how out of hand things can get when push comes to shove.
(1 hr 47. Rated “R” in the USA for violence and language. In English. With James Nesbitt as Ivan Cooper, Allan Gildea as Kevin McCorry, Gerard Crossan as Eamonn McCann, Mary Moulds as Bernadette Devlin, Carmel McCallion as Bridget Bond (as Carmel Mccallion,) Tim Pigott-Smith as Major General Ford, Nicholas Farrell as Brigadier Maclellan, Christopher Villiers as Major Steele (as Chris Villiers,) James Hewitt as Colonel Tugwell, Declan Duddy as Gerry Donaghy, Edel Frazer as Gerry’s girl, Joanne Lindsay as Mary Donaghy, and many others.)