necrobeast666 The thought was there but the audio guys defiantly went on vacation while the filming was done. The audio is such a garbled mess it makes the film almost unwatchable. A great piece of history was mutilated by the filmmaker.I am sure after the screening there were humans that were asking " what the hell is that noise" and should have been corrected by someone with the gift of hearing .This is a tragedy that will remembered by the Irish forever and a black mark against the British forever.Being a Canadian with an Irish bloodline I was looking forward to seeing this film. It is still worth the time to see.

s13ky This film highlights the dark cloud over Northern Ireland following the incident occurring on 30 January 1972 in which British soldiers fired on unarmed civilians taking part in a supposedly-peaceful march in the Bogside area of Derry. What happened? Why are they throwing stones?, What triggers the bloody event? Those questions really should have been thought of when producing this film. First of all, as a part of crucial historical event, I feel that this film doesn't give proper introduction to the situation described even though some people can easily relate the title with the incident. Let us be logical, this wasn't the first massacre happened, events like this(whether more or less violent) may occur every day all over the globe to any unfortunate human race, just like the one occurred in Carandiru, Brazil. Despite the improper introduction, Paul Greengrass in a daring way portrayed this turmoil in such an honest, shocking, scary, daunting, disturbing and creepy way. I also admire the way he merged some original footages to the shoot, making it look even more real. The authentic feel of a documentary film obtained through the use of hand-held camera work is superb. This results in stunning realism, one feels part of that fateful day when dialog fails, when a supposedly peaceful demonstration ends with suppressed side stones with water, rubber bullets, tear gas, to lead to the negative lead bullets which crippled the lives of 13 people transforming into a killing with impunity which had no punishment to those responsible. The soundtrack, including U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", is also exquisitely composed and inserted here and there at the right moment. In short, the visual really helps the public understand various factors that lead to the events that occur in this film.

sddavis63 "Bloody Sunday" is a movie that might be best described as chaotic - which is surely not inappropriate for any movie dealing with the tragedies of Northern Ireland and in particular with the events of January 30, 1972 in Derry. This TV production was filmed in a quasi- documentary style, which perhaps added a touch of reality to what was happening but which, to me, also failed to engage. It largely follows the efforts of the Irish Catholic Member of Parliament Ivan Cooper to organize a peaceful protest march through the streets of Derry, only to be forcibly confronted by the British military. Cooper seems to have modelled his "Civil Rights Association" after figures who were noted for non-violence - particularly Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. There's absolutely no doubt here that the movie takes sides - it's pro-Irish Catholic and anti-British Army. I don't know that I'd go so far as to declare it pro-IRA, though. The IRA doesn't actually get mentioned very often, the emphasis being on the contrast between the desire of the protesters for a peaceful march and the apparent over-reaction of British troops. The movie is far more interesting in its second half, once the confrontation begins. The lead up to the confrontation really didn't capture me all that much, but the events of the actual confrontation were realistically and graphically recreated.I suppose that now (in 2010) before one falls into the trap of declaring this pro-IRA (or at least anti-British) propaganda, one has to take into account the results of the Saville Inquiry, which were made public in June 2010 and led to an apology from David Cameron - the British Prime Minister - in response. The closing captions of the movie certainly make clear that the sympathies of the producers were with the protesters.I didn't consider this to be a great production, but it certainly gives a hint of what feelings were like in Northern Ireland in those troubled times, and it raises a lot of unsettling questions about the use of violence and what it accomplishes.

Darren Certainly, anything dealing with "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland will quickly create a great divide between opposing viewpoints, and obviously 'Bloody Sunday' is no exception. For the record, I am no fan of the IRA. On the other hand I am no fan of sending an attacking force into a civil disturbance as police support. History is replete with evidence that this is simply a bad idea and will likely lead to an atrocity. For this I heap far more blame at the feet of British politicians who move their army around like chess pieces rather than at the feet of the army itself. And I believe Paul Greengrass handles this as such. Brigadier Maclellan is portrayed as a thoroughly professional soldier who is very conscientious about handling the march with minimal force yet finds this insurmountable upon the arrival of Major General Ford, who seems determined to have his Paras show those pesky Republicans who's boss. The Paras themselves are an elite attacking unit. They are trained to jump from planes and kill with maximum effect, not to make sure peace marchers remain peaceful. They don't want to be there any more than the Irish Catholics want them to be there. They're not policemen. They are frustrated and angry, but they are the ones with guns, Queen and country behind them. And when told to move in, they move in with a vengeance. Again, sending an assault force into a civil insurrection is just a bad idea. The inquest that followed may have been incomplete, but with all due respect to the Parachute Regiment in an unenviable situation, it was a massacre regardless of who fired first (and again Paul Greengrass does not take sides here and make it obvious where the first shot came from). There is a huge difference between understanding why something happened and attempting to justify it.That said, Paul Greengrass's near pathological attention to detail ceases to amaze me after multiple viewings. Having long been a student of the army in Northern Ireland, there is no fault to be found in reference to the soldiers. The flak jackets worn beneath old pattern Para smocks, the mix of maroon berets and para helmets, the wood stocks of the rifles rather than the later plastic. Paul Greengrass apparently hired ex-servicemen who had done tours in Northern Ireland, thus eliminating the need to train the cinematic soldiers to look like real soldiers. They knew the lingo, they knew how to hold their weapons, they knew how to assault. In fact, Simon Mann, the actor who plays the Para commanding officer, was once in the British Special Air Service (SAS) until 1985, and in 2004 was arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea. Many of the scenes are carbon copies of actual incidents seen in archival footage of the actual march. If you are familiar with such footage, you begin to forget you're watching a recreation. It is a dark and cold film. It is gray and gritty. There is no dramatic score. The camera-work is often shaky. Dialogue is sometimes hard to understand. What is going on is sometimes confusing. And you know what? Life is like that sometimes, and that's what makes this film so powerful and brutally realistic.