The editing of Bloody Sunday was noted in J. Hoberman's review of the film:...cuts back and forth between the spirited Irish Catholics preparing to march through their republican neighborhood and the grim, gray-faced British command making plans to stop them.

The nominal protagonist is Protestant MP and pacifist civil rights leader Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt), who cheerfully orchestrates the march and then is overwhelmed by the unfolding catastrophe.

The "you are there" faux combat photography, a sequence that runs nearly three-quarters of an hour, is as remarkable in its staging as Black Hawk Down's, except that Bloody Sunday was shot largely on 16mm, Greengrass is frequently closer to the action, and here, for the most part, the victims are unarmed civilians.

Few films have captured the chaos of an urban conflagration with such fury, and audience members will leave feeling as shaken as Nesbitt's Cooper looks when the bullets stop flying.

With his hangdog features looking more sullen than should be humanly possible, he prophetically tells reporters that, "The British army couldn't have handed the IRA a bigger victory than they did here today."