Thanks to Scotland’s independence referendum, Northern Ireland will probably get a taste of devo max. The increased autonomy would hardly have satisfied the irrationally violent “Provisional” IRA in the 1970s. One British soldier stranded in the wrong neighborhood will try to elude the faction’s death squad, but there will be other interested parties also hunting him in Yann Demange’s “'71.”
Private Gary Hook’s unit has been hurriedly dispatched to Belfast, which is just as much a part of the U.K. as Piccadilly Circus or Leicester Square. Yet, it is most definitely dangerous duty.
Rising star Jack O'Connell looks ridiculously young and lost in the grim, battle-scarred world, but that is the whole point.
