Black 47 (15)
Directed by Lance Daly

IN A tale of revenge and redemption, this bleak and powerful Western-style drama explores the brutality, oppression and ruthlessness of British rule in Ireland.

It follows hardened Irish Ranger Feeney (James Frecheville) who, having fought for the British army abroad turns deserter. He returns home to his estranged family to discover that his mother has died from starvation and his brother has been hanged by the state.

When his sister-in-law and her starving children are then evicted from their home by their feudal landlord, resulting in their deaths, Feeney embarks on a path to avenge his loved ones by killing everyone responsible, working from the bottom to the top of the social and political scale as he does so.

He's pursued by ageing British soldier Hannah (a sterling Hugo Weaving), a renowned hunter of deserters, who's tasked with tracking down and capturing Feeney and who, it transpires, is an old army buddy.

The film is set in Connemara, where spectacular but harsh and unforgiving landscape reflects the grim and bitter hardships endured by the Irish at the hands of the British empire, the potato blight and subsequent famine. The latter resulted in a million deaths from starvation and disease, with another million people forced to migrate.

Co-writer and director Lance Daly deals with a very complex subject in an intelligent, authentic and ingenious film that captures the deprivation and horrors of the time while questioning the motives for revenge and who is to blame for the famine that devastated Ireland.

You can't help but empathise with and root for the Clint Eastwood-style Feeney, given a formidable performance by Frecheville. A one-man killing machine of few words, we see through his eyes the injustices and inhumanity carried out by the wealthy on the poor and the starving, epitomised by Jim Broadbent's callous and cold-hearted Lord Kilmichael whom Feeney saves until last — all before Hannah closes in on him.

Brutally violent without being sadistic, nothing is black or white in this gripping and thought-provoking film which stays in the mind long after the end credits have rolled.