Struggling for dignity
7 March 2004
'Some Mother's Son' focuses on the 1981 Maze Prison hunger strike in which the IRA captives demanded to be treated as POW instead of criminals, for they regard their struggle as a war, not 'ordinary' crime. The leader, Bobby Sands, was elected in jail as MP but eventually died on 5 May, 1981. Several mothers then intervened in order to save their sons' lives: they did not want to watch their sons die.

I personally think this film is quite thought-provoking and the acting is convincing. Helen Mirren, as Kathleen Quigley, who has not been aware that her son Gerard (Aidan Gillen) is an IRA soldier, is determined to help her son to survive, while Fionnula Flanagan (Annie Higgins) is terrific as a nationalist mother who is right behind her son's beliefs but eventually witnesses his death, only after losing her other son, who is shot dead by the British Troops.

Some might say many of us are IRA sympathisers and that they are nothing but a bunch of killers, that they are nothing but a bunch of terrorists. However, as one reviewer put, 'there would be no IRA if there was no British oppression'.
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