Terrorism films (III): ‘Bloody Sunday’

Good recommendation, Mr. "FrustratedinDC." My wife and I continued our Terrorism Film Festival by watching Bloody Sunday the other night. It isn’t about terrorist acts so much as it is about how hamfisted government actions can create terrorists and encourage popular support for them. It would make a good if exhausting double bill with Battle of Algiers. On its own, Bloody Sunday would make a great final exam for officers studying counterinsurgency doctrine: Watch it and then write a plan to do it differently. It is harder than it looks. 

Btw, the final report of the most recent British government inquiry into the events of  the "Bloody Sunday" of 1972 is scheduled to be published in three months.

Bonus fact: General Sir Mike Jackson, who got in a squabble with Gen. Wesley Clark over Kosovo and later was chief of the British general staff, was a company XO in the paratrooper regiment in Derry during the Bloody Sunday events. 

We also watched Arlington Road, which I found kind of weird-more a festival of paranoia then an insightful look at terror, and so it doesn’t make my list. Next up: Paradise Now, recommended by many readers, and Weather Underground, suggested by the intrepid Michael Totten.  

I think terrorism may be the dominant theme of the history of our era, so I am surprised there aren’t more thoughtful movies that grapple with it.