Butler's Cinema Scene

Jack O’Connell

“’71” My rating: B (Opens March 20 at the Glenwood Arts)

99 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The soldier trapped behind enemy lines has long been a staple of the war film, but the new British release “’71” gives it an original and singularly deadly spin.

The place: Belfast. The time: 1971.

Private Hook (Jack O’Connell, looking about 10 years younger than he did in “Unbroken”) finds himself deployed to Northern Ireland.

“You are not leaving this country,” an officer reassures. Technically, he’s correct, for Belfast is part of the United Kingdom. But for all practical purposes Hook might as well be stationed on an alien planet filled with wildlife bent on killing him.

His immersion into the “troubles” is sudden and deadly. Doing house-to-house searches in a Catholic neighborhood, his unit is mobbed by furious locals hurling stones. Hook is surrounded and beaten, barely escaping with his life.

Meanwhile, his unit has scrambled back into their trucks and hightailed it for their barracks.  Hook is alone in enemy territory.

Here’s the problem: As a newcomer Hook can’t tell the difference between a Catholic neighborhood, where the locals would happily kill him, and a Protestant one where — in theory anyway — he can find shelter.

Things are further complicated by fighting between Protestant and Catholic militiamen, both of whom reject the peacekeeping function of British troops. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a power struggle within the IRA with young radicals bent on mayhem defying the orders of their more cautious elders.

Hooks spends an afternoon hiding in a backyard privy, then covers his uniform with civvies stolen from a clothesline. He’s desperate to get back to his barracks…but he’s completely lost.

In a night filled with panic and fear he will be pursued by an IRA hit squad, barely survive a pub bombing, take shelter with a man and his daughter (Richard Dormer, Charlie Murphy) who sew up his wounds, and fall into the hands of a streetsmart Protestant 10-year-old (Corey McKinley).

But Hook will also stumble upon evidence that a squad of undercover British officers are waging an illegal assassination and bombing campaign against the Catholics…and so he will become a target of malefactors from his own side.

Today Hook would simply call for help on his cell phone. But in 1971 very few residents of Belfast’s poorer districts had even land lines.

Gregory Burke’s screenplay is stingy with exposition…in fact there’s no more dialogue than is absolutely necessary. This results in a terse, streamlined film in which what we see is far more important than what we hear.

Meanwhile, director Yann Demange — making a very impressive feature debut — employs handheld cameras to provide a documentary-like, torn-from-the-headlines look.

As a result, “’71” is an immersive experience. Like Private Hook, when we’re not actually running for our lives we’re dreading what may lie just around the next corner. Traditional battlefields are bad enough…an urban landscape teeming with guerrilla killers is doubly terrifying.

| Robert W. Butler