It's really hard to make a war movie these days and have it really stick, simply because there are too many of them and they've started looking like the other. This is not the case with '71, a film that, for first-time feature film director Yann Demange, could have easily fallen apart, but he maintains a tight script, great action, and well-paced suspense throughout and touches on a very interesting topic that isn't touched upon very often.
Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell), a soldier never having seen any kind of war, is deployed to Belfast, the largest city in Northern Ireland and the center of conflict between Catholics and Protestants which include opposing sides, turmoil,
Hook and his unit, headed by Lt. Armitage (Sam Reid, Belle), get to the city of Belfast in 1971 and are met with hostility and angry mobs. Hook and another soldier are cornered and beaten before a local woman attempts to stop the violence, but not before someone is shot and Hook is then chased further into town under threat of gunfire by the NRA, who have two factions unknowingly playing for two different sides. Hook must spend the entire night under cover and fighting to stay alive, caught between the two sides.
The film gets into its plot pretty quickly, not wasting too much time on the Hook's back story. We only find out he has a son and no other real attachments. The film isn't heavy on dialogue, but when people do speak, it's to further the story and heighten the tension, because we're smart enough to understand what's going on and that Hook being stuck, alone, in Belfast is a very, very bad thing. Demange takes advantage of the fact that his film takes place at night and this only serves to make the film more thrilling and suspenseful.
Jack O'Connell, whose upcoming role in Angelina Jolie's Unbroken is being highly buzzed about, holds down his character really well, maintains a believable struggle for survival, and creates great and intense reactions to the insanity happening around him. The supporting characters are all good, although Sam Reid's role isn't as large as one would anticipate.
The action is effective because never does Demange stop for a long time after it takes place to let us process completely what has just happened. Events take place, some heartbreaking and shocking and hard to watch, but the story never breaks for the audience, just as real life events never stop to let anyone catch their breaths, especially in life-threatening situations. There's definitely intensity there, to the film's credit.
There could have been some more development in terms of background story and characters, but I suppose the idea was to maintain tension without getting too deep in a more complicated plot. Demange keeps the plot simple, a bit hard to follow at first only because there are a few players in the game and we have to sort through all of them, but not including any side stories is a good decision for this kind of film, whose focus is mostly on delivering thrilling action.
'71 is a pretty solid action thriller. Demange uses his characters and setting really well, doesn't take up too much time giving us facts about the conflict, but still gives us enough information for us to understand the tensions and fear for the lead character. There are some very disturbing scenes that include gruesome images that could have been heightened with a bit more of a musical score, but are still raw and powerful on their own. For his first feature film, Demange does a good job in keeping up with the pacing and action without bogging down the film with unnecessary plot and overdone dialogue, and O'Connell as a struggling, fighting-for-his-life, and out-of-sorts soldier does well to create a suspenseful and highly intense atmosphere. 
