Just saying.

Sinn Fein is still working, peacfully - through political means - for a socialist republic for all of Ireland.

It’s true, we don’t know why Sinead believes what she believes. But we don’t know why Teddy does either. Only Damien and Dan really get backstory for their beliefs, Dan even more so than Damien.

And yes, the movie really does make you ponder what you would do in these situations, even though there’s no way to know for sure.

Having personally met with members of several guerilla type movements when they didn’t have thier “meet the public” face on, I will tell you they are people who have lost most of what you would call humanity. They are scary, ruthless people. Dig deep into most any resistance movement and you can verify these observations.

I see your argument that none of the characters were particularly strongly written. I think Dan was . But the other main characters all had a particular set of beliefs and we knew at least a little about why they felt that way. We never got the same from Sinnead.

I agree with your last point - I don’t think the movie was presenting the shooting as the right thing to do. I didn’t mean to imply that I did. More that the movie made me think about where my lines were.

1. While I agree with your overall insights about the sexism in the film, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you put it. While Sinead is the only principal character who’s a woman, she is not the only woman shown involved in the resistance. One of my favorite scenes involves women leaders, and paradoxically, exposes the sexism among some of the IRA men. It’s a scene where a female judge makes a ruling against an Irish landlord in favor of a poor woman tenant, and Teddy goes outside the authority of the court, where women are shown to have a stronger role than in the army, to flout the ruling and make a backroom boys’ deal with the landlord to insure that he’ll keep funding their arms purchases. Women speak out in other contexts too, but overall, it’s not enough.

2. I agree that Sinead’s part is a bit underwritten. But I also think Teddy’s part was underwritten. Why is he more moderate than his brother, especially after being tortured? We need more information. I would have even liked more development of Damien, who gets the spotlight most, though this is an ensemble piece through and through. I think the character development overall is not strong enough, and that’s one reason why this amazingly realistic, truly disturbing movie still doesn’t pack the emotional wallop in the end that it might have.

3. I took Damien’s decision re his shooting of Chris and his impending execution differently than you did. I think that Damien felt he didn’t deserve an easy out given the crime he had committed. I think he saw the act as wrong, though the situation he was put in when he was ordered to execute Chris was complex. And I think that he felt that if he gave up his ideals now that his own life was on the line, it would make what he did even worse and would let him off the hook for that terrible act. He stubbornly chooses to go to his own death partially out of political idealism, but also out of deep guilt. He chooses extreme punishment, putting himself under the same rules that Chris had to deal with, even though he could have chosen to live. You could say that Damien is choosing justice for Chris by choosing to accept the death penalty for himself. I don’t think the execution of Chris was presented as the right thing to do. This movie has complex, conflicted things to say about violence, war and how to fight for freedom — there are no easy answers, and that’s why, despite my criticisms of it, I think it’s a great film. It’s incredibly thought-provoking. My friend and I discussed so many angles of what was right and who was right for a long time afterwards.