The Unbroken star spends most of the thriller ‘71 terrified, while Hayek’s Everly works as a shut-in’s tribute to Tarantino.
Jack O'Connell in '71
Roadside Attractions
Salma Hayek in Everly
RADiUS-TWC
Jack O'Connell looks scared shitless throughout most of '71.
And that fear only ratchets up the tension in the film, which opens in limited release this weekend along with the Salma Hayek-fronted Everly, both of which try what you might call a narrow-focus approach to action, centering on a character who's isolated, desperate, and only able to react.
To be clear, scared shitless is an expression O'Connell wears well. A strapping twentysomething who resembles a seasoned bruiser from some angles and an unguarded kid from others, the British actor was shockingly good as a tough teenager thrown in with the hardened grown-ups in last year's bracing prison movie Starred Up . O'Connell's just as impressive as another out-of-his-depth newcomer in director Yann Demange's (Dead Set) feature film debut, in which he plays a soldier-in-training whose first appearance on screen comes with a face bloodied from a boxing match. (Ironically, the actor's most recent role, in Angelina Jolie's Unbroken, gave him a shot at mainstream stardom but offered him the least to work with, putting his character in the position of a martyr rather than a man.)
The film '71 tracks O'Connell's character, Gary Hook, through the streets of Belfast during one tumultuous night during the early days of the Troubles. Hook's squadron has been deployed to help with what's been described to them as the "deteriorating security situation" in the area. They're theoretically around to assist the police, but the reality they arrive in is an urban war zone, and their first day out goes sickeningly wrong. What was meant to be a search of houses for weapons escalates into a riot, and Hook and another soldier get left behind in the chaos. When his colleague is shot, right in the middle of street, by members of an IRA faction, Hook takes off running.
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