This is one of the most tragic movies I have ever seen in my life. It's also one of the best. Don't bother with any of the ridiculous hack-job reviews that have been done on this movie by people who admit they've never even seen it. (Including writers for some of the top British papers.) They hated it before it was even finished, for one reason and one reason only- because it tells the true story of the IRAs partially successful War of Independence from British rule in Ireland.

This isn't some slick piece of Hollywood fluff like some of the other movies on the same topic. It's a gritty, realistic and heartbreaking story that looks and feels so real you feel like you're not watching a movie at all, but the actual events. It covers not only the guerilla campaign that led to independence, but the fratricidal civil war that followed afterward. It doesn't flinch, it doesn't pull any punches, and it doesn't try to romanticize or whitewash anything on either side of the conflict. It just tells the truth, and achieves the epic stature of great tragedy in doing so. You'll feel like begging the movie to do the Hollywood thing and give you a happy ending against all odds- but you'll also trust the writers too much to think for a minute that they're really going to do that. “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” should be on everyone's Top 10 list of great war films.