by MATTHEW HAYS

The timing of the release of Omagh couldn’t be better. Not because of St. Patrick’s Day, but rather, because of the three-year mark for the Iraq war, just reached last weekend. That, of course, has been justified by Bush and Blair as a response to 9/11. What Omagh suggests—and quite brilliantly, I might add—is that you can’t fight terror by creating more of it.

The film begins innocently, with a number of Irish families going about their daily business. Omagh then goes about portraying the events of June of 1998, when Ireland was on the cusp of a meaningful peaceful accord. That didn’t bode well for extremists, who felt that the IRA was caving and that the agreement should be scrapped. They figured the best way to destroy the peace was to go to Omagh, a small town where Catholics and Protestants had coexisted without incident for years. When the bomb went off, 29 people were killed.

With Omagh, director Pete Travis and co-screenwriter and co-producer Paul Greengrass (who was behind Bloody Sunday, another excellent movie about Ireland’s Troubles) employ gritty camerawork to recreate the scene. And as expected, it’s seriously unpleasant. Amazingly, that shaky hand-held camera continues to set off a feeling of realism, even though we should know better by now. The painstaking recreation of the physical reality after a bombing of this sort is nauseatingly effective.

But Travis and Greengrass go much further than some gory effects and rubble. The film then follows the plight of one family, the Gallaghers, after they lose a son to the explosion. The town of Omagh forms a support group for relatives of the dead, who begin to demand answers from the government as to why no charges are being laid in the bombing.

Omagh will certainly make you angry. It’s a sobering and depressing look at the effects of terror, first hand. Luckily, the peace process in Ireland was able to progress despite the setback. But it’s impossible not to feel overwhelmed while watching this film, given how far off we are from any meaningful understanding in the Middle East.

Omagh opens Friday, March 24

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