A great script, cast, acting, covering a great tale of injustice and violence. Incredible the amount of great Cinema that barely gets an airing in the UK. Historical events such as the Famine, Culloden, Easter Rising, Transportation, Glencoe Massacre, Tolpuddle martyrs, Peterloo and the Highland Clearances are stories that deserve telling. Instead the Big Budgets are left to fetishise WW2 again and again.

This is a revenge drama in a quite different milieu one might expect. The setting is Ireland during the notorious Potato Famine of 1845 to 1852. The story weaves in a mention of how it came about which isn't historically accurate, since it was described as virtually an overnight event. However 1847 was the worst year of the Famine because most potato farmers did not plant seeds in expectation that the potato crop would fail again, did not have any more seeds or had been evicted for failure to pay rent. But the British treatment of the indigent Irish as depicted in the film is pretty much on point, which led the principal character to seek retribution against the authorities that condoned and contributed to the death of his family. Usually in a film like this, the protagonist would be portrayed as a sympathetic character, but in this case, Martin Feeney (James Frecheville) is a brooding, almost despicable ex-soldier who left his post in Afghanistan to return to his home country. After hanging the judge who imposed a death sentence on his brother, Feeney is pursued by British Captain Pope (Freddie Fox), accompanied by hunter/tracker Hannah (Hugo Weaving), an aide named Hobson (Barry Keoghan), and an interpreter (Stephen Rea) who also serves as a guide.

Over the course of the story, it's interesting to witness how some of the principals alter their view of how the downtrodden Irish farmers are treated. Hobson for one, puts his life on the line to prevent stores of grain from being transported abroad, while Inspector Hannah, who had already been arrested for killing a prisoner, decides to side with Feeney to thwart Captain Pope from bringing the army deserter in for murder. Alternatively, the attitude and mindset of the British authorities in evicting peasants from their homes and forcing them into starvation is an appalling display of man's inhumanity to man. As the viewer, one is compelled to demand justice for the poor Irish peasants and see that the tyrannical authorities become targets of revenge. Consistent with the misery and bleak existence that was endured during the Irish Potato Famine, there really is no happy ending here, as the storming of the grain supplies by the starving peasants is the only positive outcome, temporary as it might have been in the face of overwhelming odds.