Mjeteconer Just perfect...

GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

beorhhouse I give this anti-war gem 9 stars even though the various groups were not delineated enough to maintain clarity. The British Secret Service, I think, was involved as well as the IRA and the PIRA and supporters as well as the UDA, the RUC, and the British Army. I have friends in Belfast. I never visited, but I did spend time in Derry, and I lived in Armagh. My plans were to visit Omagh, but I left Ireland instead, missing the bombing by just a week or so (1998). This film shows, above all, humanity in the face of fearful hatred of 'the other.'

julian158 Great well made about the troubles in Ireland. Highly recommended.

gamergcfan This movie manages to be thrilling throughout as the character tries to survive the Troubles. However, the last 20 minutes or so unnecessarily overcomplicates the plot with contrived twists. Also, a more minor flaw, but the characters could've been developed a bit more.I appreciate the realism in many of the parts of the movie, such as the inept bomb handler. Handling bombs isn't always easy.+ Thrilling+ Realism to itFlawed plot in last 20 minutesCharacters could be a little betterI can't give it the best rating, so I'll give it a 7.

jc-osms This British-made film was a tense, frightening but ultimately unbelievable watch. The story line is very simple, a young English soldier is pitched into Belfast at the height of the Troubles in 1971 and gets separated from his colleagues while they try to defuse a riot in the Catholic area of town. After a fellow-soldier he tries to assist is ruthlessly shot in the face and killed by a young Nationalist, he runs for his life ending up he knows not where, only that he's lost, in great danger at every turn and must get back safely to his company or risk the same fate as his mate.The sense of realism is palpable and you almost feel like you're watching an old TV newsreel of old, so true to life do the events seem. Most nights back in the early 70's, atrocities like this filled the evening news, so much so that they became less than shocking to so commonplace did they become. Belfast at the time was a divided city right down the Shanklands Road fault line, with young militants coming to the fore, feeling big with a gun in their hand, thinking themselves almost untouchable as they dispensed summary justice if that's the right phrase to young men doing their job, not much older than them and with no real feeling for the political issues of the day. Of course the Provisional IRA saw the British Army as an occupying force and so declared war on them, with the soldiers unable to take any sort of official retaliatory action. Where the film is very good is in its depiction of Belfast as a war-torn city. You share Jack O'Connell's young soldier's sense of displacement and rising terror as he tries to get back to base but bumps into various people who he doesn't know are friend or foe. Behind the scenes, the local police chief will do little to help the search and he and his second-in-command care nothing for the missing soldier's welfare. Corrupt and above the law, they're little different from the callous, cold-blooded gang they're pursuing.Although the action is gripping and gritty, I think the film took too much cinematic licence with the drama shown here, never more so than in the last-gasp rescue just when it seemed his luck had ran out, while some of the supporting characters seemed just too stereotypical, for example the young Loyalist boy who swears like a trooper and gives orders like he's the supremo rather than being his uncle's nephew. Later McConnell encounters a Protestant bomb team who bungle their task with devastating effects, a retired Protestant man and his teenage daughter who take him in and tend to his wounds and of course the young Catholic gang out for his blood.Strikingly realistic and unflinching in its depiction of violence, the film makes no judgement on the characters on both sides of the argument. There's not much political debate, just an "us and them" mentality fuelled by bloodlust and inbred hatred of the other side purely on religious grounds.This film was at times hard to watch as the scared and scarred soldier tries to make his escape through the sprawling housing estate at dead of night, but while the depiction was super-real, I just wasn't quite convinced that the events played out here could have actually occurred, especially with the cinematic licence taken at the climax. Nevertheless, it was extremely well acted and tellingly evocative of its time, it certainly brought back unwelcome memories of a terrible time one can only hope Northern Ireland has put behind it for good.