If 2014 is primed to yield one breakout star, that’s Jack O’Connell, the British thesp at the heart of Angelina Jolie’s WWII awards contender Unbroken. Already, O’Connell has impressed us with his electric performance in the underseen prison drama Starred Up, and he looks set to do it again in the action-drama ’71, releasing this fall.
O’Connell stars as a young British soldier left behind in the brutal street battles of Belfast in 1971. The movie, directed by Yann Demange, earned raves at the Berlin Film Festival, and it’s easy to see why when you look at the first trailer for the film. Gritty, dramatic and fast-paced, it looks like a real winner from top to bottom.
Roadside Attractions has acquired U.S. distribution rights but has not yet scheduled the film. We’d expect to see it land either this fall on hot on the heels of Unbroken, so as to capitalize on that bigger title’s surefire success. For U.K. viewers, however, ’71 arrives on October 10th.
A young and disoriented British soldier is accidentally abandoned by his unit following a riot on the deadly streets of Belfast in 1971.
