It goes back to the Battle of the Boyne in the 17th century, when Catholic King James II was defeated and large numbers of English Protestants moved into Ireland, settling predominantly in the north and owning much of the rest of Ireland, leaving the resident Catholics with a lower-than-low standard of living.
Fast-forward a few centuries, and one country has been divided into two but little has improved. In 1968, violent protests once again broke out between Catholics and Protestants and by 1971, the time of Yann Demange’s film, 71, the British Army was trying in vain to restore order.
It’s in this climate that our new recruit, fresh off basic training, discovers that his regiment is not going to Germany after all, but is being deployed to Northern Ireland “due to the deteriorating situation in Belfast.”
The city is split into Protestant Loyalist (“friendly”) and Catholic Nationalist (“hostile”) factions, divided by the Falls Road. The British Army enters the fray to search for weapons and rebels. As soon as the army jeeps rumble around the corner, the women bang bin lids on the pavement to let everyone know a house-to-house search is imminent.
There’s an interrogation between an over-zealous RUC constable and a woman with an infant and child; a brutal beating or two. And after a riot, our soldier finds himself on the wrong side of the Falls Road, bloodied by the man shot within inches of him, and racing down alleyways as his regiment retreats behind him.
Jack O’Connell is our soldier, Gary Hook, though he is known only as the Soldier for most of the film. O’Connell took similar abuse in Unbroken, but manages to have more impact here with far less dialogue. (That English accent is a dead giveaway, see?)
It’s more difficult to get out of the labyrinthine, debris-strewn neighbourhood than you would think. Burning cars are scattered here and there, and the odd kid is around, waiting to hurl a bag of urine should the soldiers come back. Other than that, the streets are eerily quiet.
Disguising oneself was a lot easier back then, of course, before there were inside dryers: the Soldier ditches his uniform, sneaks some laundry off the line and tries to stanch his wound. But those military boots are a dead giveaway.
He walks straight into a bomb plot destined for the Omagh Road. Enter that trademark black Irish humour: “How’re you going to get up in the morning?” “Why?” “You’re not getting your alarm clock back, are you?” as two men construct a bomb under a portrait of the queen.
Now it isn’t just the Catholics who want him dead.
A botched British Army undercover job (led by a menacing Sean Harris) as well as a plot among upstarts (Killian Scott) to kill the local IRA man both interfere with the Soldier’s chances of making it out alive. Thank goodness for the kindness of a former army medic and his daughter (Richard Dormer, Charlie Murphy), cue an agonizing surgery-on-the-fly scene.
Demange choreographs the chase scenes to perfection, with the camera operator seemingly out-of-breath inches behind O’Connell. The parallels in the film are also finely drawn: the early bonding scene between Gary and his little brother (Harry Verrity), who is living in an orphanage, sets up the pairing of the soldier and the boy who first tries to help get him out (Corey McKinley); obstacle courses during basic training mirror the scaled walls and cracks in doorways that Gary navigates during his frantic escape.
The film diplomatically avoids a strictly Catholic-Protestant take on things and spreads the blame for the night’s violence around. Ditto our near-silent Soldier, who is painted as being without any particular loyalties, all the better to enjoy the gritty and atmospheric chase of one violent night.
71 opens Friday at Fifth Avenue.
