Just over thirty years ago, on January 30, 1972, Northern Ireland was shaken by an incident that came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

To recreate that event, writer/director, Paul Greengrass, has approached his subject documentary-style. Hand-held cameras, grainy, washed-out images and overlapping dialogue give it a look and sound that suggest an “on-the-spot” authenticity, as do the actors’ credible performances, which often seem more like genuine reactions to the drama that escalates around them. They are played, however, strictly in character, by an outstanding cast.

Chief among these performances is that of James Nesbitt as MP, Ivan Cooper, who leads a civil rights march protesting against internment without trial in Northern Ireland. Cooper is determined to lead a peaceful march through the streets of Derry, even though Major General Ford (Tim Pigott-Smith) of the British Army has warned that such marches are illegal.

As the protestors set off, the British Army prepares to apprehend any hooligans. In an operation conducted by Brigadier MacLellan (Nicholas Farrell), soldiers of the Parachute Regiment, under Colonel Wilford (Simon Mann) move into the city to carry out the arrests. Prevented from entering the city centre, most of the marchers divert to another street and gather for a rally, but a breakaway group moves towards the Army barricades and begins to taunt and throw stones at the soldiers.

Rubber bullets and water cannons are fired into the rioters, but are suddenly replaced by real bullets. Panic spreads, people start falling, and the targets seem to be indiscriminate. Thirteen people die and fourteen are injured.

As the shocked city tries to comprehend what has happened, a shell-shocked Cooper, whose peaceful protest has ended in carnage, warns the British government that they have destroyed the civil rights movement and handed a victory to the IRA for which support dramatically increases.