I will not summarise the film as many people have already done that here. What want to do is comment on some of the inaccuracies and bias in the film.
1 Firstly as someone else pointed out Martin was never shot in Canada
2 In one part of the film KIngsely says that the IRA are terrorists and Martin replies that he is discriminated against by the British who act like terrorists. This is never challenged and its never mentioned that the security forces contain Northern Irish people too. The film acts almost as if protestants are not legitimate citizens on Northern Ireland. It seems to want to reduce the conflict to the facile level of a British army occupying Ireland which is what ignorant Americans always claimed. So in this way it panders to ignorance.
3 For the information of the film makers people in 1980's Northern Ireland referred to parking lots as car parks, called hoods, yobs or hoodlums, and did not used the sentence construction 'get to' as in 'I get to have a new car...'. The attempt to Americanise the English language (presumably so that ignorant people can understand it better) detracts from its realism.
4 At the beginning of the film Martin runs from a police/ Army checkpoint and is chased until he is caught. I can assure the film makers that in Northern Ireland at that time anyone running from a checkpoint would have been shot. Ohh but then we would have had no film, so that can't be allowed to happen can it?
1 Firstly as someone else pointed out Martin was never shot in Canada
2 In one part of the film KIngsely says that the IRA are terrorists and Martin replies that he is discriminated against by the British who act like terrorists. This is never challenged and its never mentioned that the security forces contain Northern Irish people too. The film acts almost as if protestants are not legitimate citizens on Northern Ireland. It seems to want to reduce the conflict to the facile level of a British army occupying Ireland which is what ignorant Americans always claimed. So in this way it panders to ignorance.
3 For the information of the film makers people in 1980's Northern Ireland referred to parking lots as car parks, called hoods, yobs or hoodlums, and did not used the sentence construction 'get to' as in 'I get to have a new car...'. The attempt to Americanise the English language (presumably so that ignorant people can understand it better) detracts from its realism.
4 At the beginning of the film Martin runs from a police/ Army checkpoint and is chased until he is caught. I can assure the film makers that in Northern Ireland at that time anyone running from a checkpoint would have been shot. Ohh but then we would have had no film, so that can't be allowed to happen can it?