A young British soldier is accidentally abandoned by his unit following a terrifying riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971. Unable to tell friend from foe, the raw recruit must survive the night alone and find his way to safety through a disorienting, alien and deadly landscape.
20 July 1983, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
29 March 1972, Hammersmith, London, England, UK
18 January 1979, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
1977, England, UK
1980, Co. Cavan, Ireland
May 25, 2016
Demange crafts a tight, tense, white-knuckle night of the soul. He certainly proves he can stage a riot.
March 13, 2015
Demange's feature debut miraculously distills the often Byzantine nature of the power politics behind The Troubles in a deeply intimate chamber piece about a single day in the life of a British soldier.
March 13, 2015
People died, but it's more than the bombs, bullets and bodies. The more fascinating damage was done to psyches and souls, and Demange, with '71, comes for yours.
October 14, 2015
'71 makes so much effort to be suspenseful that it doesn't have much time to get into nuance.
March 12, 2015
The movie excites, but intelligently, without stoking blood lust or Old Testament revenge impulses.
January 01, 2016
It's O'Connell's film and he's very fine indeed, even making you forgive the occasional (and expected) lapses into 'shaky cam'.
November 12, 2015
'71 doesn't pretend that better times are near (Bloody Sunday is just a year ahead), though it does finally proffer a few shreds of humanity against a future we know will be terribly bleak.
January 01, 2016
He's a passive hero, mostly getting buffeted along by events and people beyond his control. But '71 is no less of a deadly game of cat and mouse for that, focusing more on the other players in this very bad night.
March 17, 2016
An impressive debut feature buoyed by a captivating central turn.
March 13, 2015
The film doesn't take sides, but shows how conflict stirs the pot of human emotions and how quickly things can get out of control. And it shows that in war, no one is right.
March 12, 2015
If you are in the mood for a confusing and thoroughly depressing immersion into Irish history, you can't do better. But that would be a very odd mood to be in.
