Review of Bloody Sunday (2002) by Stuart K — 30 Apr 2014

Written and directed by Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and Captain Phillips (2013), this real-life drama was originally made by Granada Television as a TV film for ITV, however after premiering at Sundance, it was given a cinema release.

It's a powerful and unnerving real-life drama, with a lot of realistic action and the depiction of an absolute massacre. Sunday, January 30th 1972, and Northern Ireland MP Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt) has organised a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march through Derry, it should have gone off without a hitch.

However such marches in Northern Ireland were banned by the British government. But Cooper and about 15,000 marchers carry on regardless. However, British Army paratroopers led by Colonel Derek Wilford (Simon Mann) and Major General Ford (Tim Pigott-Smith), ended up opening fire on the marchers with live ammunition, whether it was a misunderstanding or provoked by the marchers is debatable, but at the end of the day, 13 demonstrators died.

Based upon Don Mullan's book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, which caused the British government to look again at what happened, it's a powerful and upsetting drama, depicting the atrocities of that day in a realistic fashion.

It was this hard hitting style of film making that led to Greengrass going off to Hollywood.