Sunday, 30 January, 1972 changed the course of Ulster's Troubles, as Britis𝓀h paratroopers shot and killed 13 unarmed civilians in Londonderry's Bogside.
Writer/director Paul Greengrass impressively recreates the fateful events, cross-cutting between a range of individuals involved. There♐'s Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt), the moderate Ulster Unionist MP leading the🧔 afternoon's civil rights march; a teenage Catholic "stone-thrower" (Gerard McSorley) with a Protestant girlfriend; an inexperienced Para (Mike Edwards); and the Brigadier (Nicholas Farrell) in charge of the operation, pressured by his superiors to deploy "maximum aggression".
The cinematic template for Bloody Sunday is The Battle Of Algiers, - hence the mainly non-professional cast (which includes relatives of victims and former soldiers), the authentic locations, and the vivid, hand-held camerawork. Refusing to traffic in simplistic caricatures, this powerfully urgent drama spotli♛ghts the strategic and tactical errors that lay behind the army's fateful actions, and the British government's subsequent shameful cover-ꦬup.
