Sunday 12 July 2009

Bloody Sunday [2002]


Bloody Sunday might not be a great work of art per se, but believe me, it’ll get your blood boiling. On January 30, 1972 – a day that will forever be etched in collective and popular conscience as ‘Bloody Sunday’ – the British army and paramilitary forces opened fire on a civil rights march and murdered 13 unarmed people including 9 teenagers! This dastardly and gruesome act of violence not only shattered any hopes of peaceful resolutions, it scarred a generation of people who started joining IRA in greater numbers than ever before. Filmed in cinema vérité style, with terrific use of mostly short and medium long takes, the movie brought in a kind of hot-blooded, in-your-face kind of immediacy that made this a gripping, angry, explosive, unnerving, visceral and a deeply provocative movie. Very well dramatized, the movie is at once a powerful look at the tragic events that unfold on the screen, and a strong John Lennon-esque statement against the arrogance and high-handedness of so-called ‘Democratic Governments’. The largely non-professional cast has been led from front by James Nesbitt, as Ivan Cooper, the man who had organised what was supposed to be just a peaceful protest march on that fateful Sunday morning. The confrontational style of direction and pitch-perfect editing are really laudatory.








Director: Paul Greengrass
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Docu-Drama
Language: English
Country: UK/Ireland

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