Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.
Ken Loach's Palme d'Or winner is a searing and emotionally devastating portrait of the Irish War of Independence and subsequent Civil War. The plot is remarkably well-constructed, using the brothers' diverging loyalties to embody the broader ideological fracture that split Ireland — it builds with tragic inevitability. Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney deliver powerful, deeply committed performances that anchor the film's emotional weight. Cinematography is competent and earthy, capturing the Irish landscape with atmospheric restraint but without particular visual distinction. Novelty is solid — while Irish Republican drama is not uncharted territory, Loach's unflinching Marxist lens and focus on the civil war's class dimensions give it a pointed, distinctive perspective. The ending is genuinely harrowing and morally unsparing, refusing any consolation — one of the more emotionally crushing conclusions in modern war cinema.