Bloody Sunday

Writer and director Paul Greengrass reconstructs the events of January 30, 1972, when a peaceful civil-rights march in Northern Ireland degenerated into rock throwing and escalated into gunfire from British troops, leaving 13 dead. Greengrass doesn’t avoid taking sides. He clearly doesn’t buy the British cover-up, and he tellingly contrasts the nonviolence of march leader Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt) and the bellicosity of British Maj. Gen. Robert Ford (Tim Piggot-Smith). The film has a powerful documentary feel, as if Greengrass set out to film a simple march and then scurried for cover when the bullets started flying. Nothing feels acted or staged, and we don’t catch every word that’s spoken; Greengrass doesn’t dramatize or re-enact history so much as throw us back into it and make us feel it in our bones.