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A curious approach which animates the director: at a historical time when the IRA is turning in its weapons, Loach retakes them, updating the immemorial tensions between the English and the Irish. In 1920, a group of villagers decides to fight the iniquitous and sanguinary British enemy, following the abuses of power committed by the English with total impunity. Arbitrary arrests, torture, executions: the film does not neglect anything which justifies the recourse to weapons. As usual, the approach includes a form of didacticism crossed with romanticism. Loach finds a martyr in his beautiful revolutionary hero Cillian Murphy. The actor's grace is out of place in the director's filmography, a subscriber to films of social issues and missed rewards (no fault in working there, however!). But putting aside the introduction of this foreign body into a cinema marked out to the extreme, Loach sails on autopilot in quite troubled waters. The first part of the film is nevertheless distinguished from a second segment dedicated to internecine fighting. Various plotlines contribute to the implosion of the indifferent group. Empathy, usually reserved by the audience for crucified heroes, is totally absent from the film. Loach fails to put his characters into situations where their capacity to resist is revealed. Pro-IRA, The Wind That Shakes The Barley neglects filmmaking for the benefit of ideology. And the story goes stale and in an Irish land where the bodies are erased. Translated into English by Anji Milanovic 
 Looking for Eric
Sweet Sixteen
11'09''01 September 11
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