A Stranger Comes to Town

You can call Black 47 a Western with Irish subtitles. The sad soldier returns from the war to find his home destroyed. He tries to leave, but his enemy forces him to stay, and he seeks his justice with murderous revenge.

Sure there's lots of shooting, but since its 1840s instead of the 1870s, guns don't work as well. This is a plot point!

Before we get too much further into violence and death, here's a lighthearted interview with director Lance Daly and actor Stephen Rae.

Daly says he wants people to watch in with a "big bucket of popcorn on a Friday night and not..." Stephen finishes his sentence, "... a movie about the famine."

Black 47 is a movie about the famine, an event with many names: The Great Hunger. The British Genocide in Ireland. 

I didn't see the second trailer until today: less bang bang, more talk.

I assume most people know that Irish people aren't to blame for relying on one vulnerable vegetable for all their meals. But do people know the British response to that natural disaster? It doesn't seem so.

The legacy of the famine is everywhere you look in Ireland, beginning with the gorgeous scenery, and a country with fewer than 5 million. (There's 80 million in the Irish diaspora.) Yet there's never been a film about the famine before. I'd like to see more. If there were, the world would be a better place.