'71

Belfast, 1971. Private Gary Hook goes out with his unit on a house search and it turns into a street battle within minutes. In the scramble he is separated from his unit and left alone, in uniform, in the middle of a neighbourhood that wants him dead. Through the night he runs between Republican and Loyalist factions, and it emerges that the British Army's covert operations are in it too. It is Yann Demange's first feature. Jack O'Connell plays Gary Hook. None of it was shot in Belfast; the locations were Blackburn, Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool. The budget was 8.1 million pounds and it took 3.1 million dollars. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 96 percent and Metacritic at 83. Kenneth Turan called it a tense thriller joining physical intensity, emotional authenticity and political acuity. Manohla Dargis wrote that O'Connell runs away with the film. It took nine nominations at the 2014 British Independent Film Awards, where Demange won Best Director, and the National Board of Review named it one of the ten best independent films of 2015. Who it is for: viewers who like real-time chase thrillers and action with a political floor under it. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for it to pick a side. The film keeps the Northern Ireland conflict deliberately murky and absolves nobody.