Hunger poster & wallpaper

Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham, Brian Milligan

Maze Prison in Northern Ireland, 1981. The infamous H-Blocks is where Irish republican prisoners are on the Blanket and No-Wash protest. It is a living hell for both prisoner and prison officer as the...( read more  read more... ) H-Block leader, Bobby Sands, pursues various tactics to help his fellow republicans re-establish their political status. In order to create real change, Bobby leads a Hunger Strike to protest for special category status for republican prisoners.

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Unrated, 1 hr. 36 min.

Directed by: Steve McQueen (III)

Release Date: March 20, 2009

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Flixster Reviews (924)

  • PvtCaboose91
    September 28, 2009
    PvtCaboose91
    "There is no such thing as political murder, political bombing or political violence. There is only criminal murder, criminal bombing and criminal violence."


    Nominally, Hunger is a motion picture about the life of IRA activist Bobby Sands who died in 1981 as the

    ...( read more) result of a hunger strike. But this startling feature film debut of British visual artist Steve McQueen (no relation to the late actor whose name he oddly shares) doesn't hew to conventional biopic storytelling - instead, it's essentially a relentless and powerful montage of events (mainly the countless protests) that unfolded in Belfast's notorious Maze prison during the 1980s. As a matter of fact, Bobby Sands (played by Michael Fassbender) is not properly introduced until approximately half an hour into the movie. With Hunger, McQueen (who scripted the film with Irish playwright Enda Walsh) has crafted an effective episodic motion picture. The perspective segues smoothly from prisoner to guard to prisoner, and so on, until the film at long last settles on Sands.


    From beginning to end, Hunger is a masterwork of detailed atmosphere. Steve McQueen directs with staggering Kubrickian precision; offering a strong, visceral sense of the unspeakably brutal and violent world it portrays with its regular riots, beatings and body searches. The director brings Belfast in 1981 to life with substantial skill, aided by Sean Bobbitt's brilliant cinematography and Tom McCullagh's stunning production design. Hunger truly captures the frigid conditions the naked prisoners endured, while also itemising the nightmarish muck as the prisoners covered the walls with their own faeces to compel British officials into action. McQueen doesn't shy away from any details as he transforms this hell into visual poetry; concentrating on the naturalistic moments the inmates happened upon while wordlessly carrying out their orders and smuggling plans. McQueen insists a viewer not only see but ponder the imagery, and the director allows a viewer to do so by employing contemplative, sometimes agonisingly long, speechless takes.


    Indeed, Hunger contains barely any dialogue - it elects to let the stark, unflinching images speak volumes about the madness at hand. The contrast of routine English police manoeuvres with the feral panic of the Irish prisoners is riveting, and coloured enthrallingly by the unspoken moments of reflection as both sides attempt to deal with the daily blasts of violence. Yet, this is not a movie based solely on its imagery - a crucial element of the film is the detailed use of sound. Music is used sparingly, with the omniscient soundscape of the prison's interior instead used to heighten the most poignant moments. And the more Sands withers away towards the film's dénouement, the more minimalist the sound design is rendered (at one point supplying nothing but the sound of wind and Sands' cavernous breathing).


    After accomplishing so much using images, McQueen stops to acknowledge the power of words during one of the film's final acts. McQueen's nearly always-in-motion camera and artistic eye is set aside for a riveting 25-minute conversation between two characters. For this sequence, Sands discusses his decision to embark on a hunger strike with Father Moran (Cunningham). The two men debate the merits and ethics of the protest; lending insight into Sands' determination. While the dialogue is insanely spellbinding, it's the execution that's amazing - the bulk of this conversation occurs in one single, 17-minute unbroken take. It's simply a tour de force of writing, acting and moral complexity.


    It should come as no surprise that the performances are outstanding. Michael Fassbender (of 300 fame) literally gives his body and soul to the part of Bobby Sands; playing defiance and self-confidence throughout the film's initial two-thirds before wasting away to nothingness (there are a number of haunting, unforgettable images to behold here). Another note-worthy member of the cast is Liam Cunningham, whose acting throughout the aforementioned verbal tango with Fassbender is remarkable. Stuart Graham is also given a memorable role as a prison guard whom the film focuses on at certain points.


    Digressions from acclaim must be made, however. The scope of Hunger is admittedly too narrow and its methods are too intensive to offer a comprehensive historical analysis of the troubles of Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, too, the movie doesn't offer any profound insight into its characters. Instead McQueen's movie remains a visual exercise which shows how the characters did what they did, and in what circumstances. The result is a consistently harrowing drama that feels somewhat underdone.


    Hunger is a tough viewing experience due to the constant depictions of brutality, but it's more than a portrayal of bodily torment - it's a story of finding humanity amongst the walls of a prison during dark days.
  • SarahG1988
    September 22, 2009
    SarahG1988
    Review coming soon....
  • rebvodka042099
    July 25, 2009
    rebvodka042099
    I was ready to award this film 5 stars -but- unfortunately life doesn't always work out the way you want it. I definitely see the reason why people would deem this movie to be a masterpiece but it didn't work out the way I would hope it would for me. It mentally wore me out. This...( read more) is a film that could easily say all the things it was attempting to say in half the duration. Its action is limited, the majority of the scenes were silent and calm which works the opposite way they intend them to. There are also a couple of scenes that seem to last for ages -they are simply endless (the stationary scene where Bobby is talking to the priest or that where the guard is cleaning the prison corridor).

    However, it definitely gives you a hard punch in the stomach. The performances are flawless, powerful, and surpass by miles those of some widely-known Hollywood stars. For a low-budged film it's rewarding beyond imagination. Informative and deserving attention. And McQueen's direction is one hell of a wonderful direction.
  • shauna1354
    June 27, 2009
    shauna1354
    A remarkable piece of cinema. Director Steve McQueen keeps audiences enthralled with his unique and sharp direction and brilliant attention to detail. Michael Fassbender gives a powerhouse, faultless performance proving he may well have a bright future ahead of him in cinema. Des...( read more)pite the bleak and harrowing subject matter, Hunger is a bold and rewarding tour de force and a story that needed to be told.
  • EarthlyAlien
    March 13, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    Bobby Sands: "It's done. It won't be stopped.
    Father Moran: "Then fuck it! Life must mean nothing to you.
    Bobby Sands: God's gonna punish me.
    Father Moran: Well, if not just for the suicide, then he'd have to punish you for your stupidity.
    Bobby Sands:...( read more) Aye.
    Father Moran: And you for your arrogance.
    Bobby Sands: Because my life is a real life, not some theological exercise, some religious trick that's got to fuck all to do with living. Jesus Christ had a backbone, but see them disciples, any disciple since? You're just jumping in and out of the rhetoric and dead-end semantics. You need the revolutionaries. You need the cultural and political soldier to give life a pulse... to give life a direction.
    Father Moran: This is stupid talk. You're deluded.
    Bobby Sands: Aye. So you say."

    Photobucket

    British artist Steve McQueen's feature film debut, Hunger, co-written by Irish writer Enda Walsh, is a graphically violent, deeply brooding film about IRA volunteer Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), who led a hunger strike in 1981 aimed at improving conditions for IRA prisoners and regaining their status as political prisoners. Sands had been convicted of handgun possession and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. At the time, IRA prisoners were held together in one of several "H-Blocks," and began their protest with a "Blanket and No-Wash Protest" beginning in 1976.

    The demands of the Irish prisoners during the hunger strikes seem, in retrospect, to be relatively minor: they sought to be recognized as political prisoners (prisoners of war), and as such to not be forced to wear prison uniforms, to not be forced to have work duty, to freely associate with other prisoners, and to be entitled to a weekly visit, parcel and letter.

    The film opens with a man washing blood from his battered knuckles with echoes of Macbeth's "out damn'd spot, out I say!"; he has an air of grim determination about him as if he's resigned to whatever circumstances led to his state. The man, Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), is a prison guard, and we'll learn soon enough how his hands came to be in that state. Lohan stands in the snow, moodily smoking a cigarette; he gets ready for work at home, his wife watching worriedly as he checks under his car for a car bomb before leaving; he dresses in his uniform in the locker room and eats lunch alone, staunchly silent amidst the jovial camaraderie of his colleagues.

    In the prison, we meet Davey (Brian Milligan), a new prisoner being brought in, refusing to wear the prison uniform, and being labelled "non-cooperative." He's tossed into a cell with another IRA member - a darkly claustrophobic hole his roommate has fingerpainted from floor to ceiling with smears of feces. And it's pretty much all downhill from there. We witness the brutality which Davey, his roommate Gerry (Liam McMahon), and the other residents of the IRA cellblock endure, but more than that, we witness their resiliency in the face of circumstances under which many of us would, no doubt, come to question both our sanity and our willingness to hold onto the values which put us there in the first place.

    The core of the film, though, focuses on Sands, who led the hunger strike. Sands believes deeply and unquestioningly in the cause for which he's in prison and is willing to fight literally body and soul for the rights of the men being held for acts committed in the name of what he views as a war worth dying for. One of the film's strongest scenes is a lengthy dialogue between Sands and a visiting priest (Liam Cunningham).

    The priest, father Moran, a fast-talking, charming fellow Irishman, is trying to convince Sands that his hunger strike is nothing but suicide; Sands passionately defends both his beliefs and his reasons for organizing the strike. He knows he is martyring himself with the strike; that, to him, is the point. He's not striking for himself, but for the cause in which he believes so strongly; for the inherent human dignity of his fellow IRA prisoners and the ultimate furthering of his cause, he is willing to die an ugly and painful, self-inflicted death.

    In another powerful scene, prison guards line the hall of the IRA block decked out in full riot gear. They beat on their plastic shields with batons, creating a deafening roar; the prisoners are hauled out, one after another, and hurled into the row of guards, who beat the living shit out of them as they're forced down the hallway for a body cavity check performed with all the violence of a gang rape. It's an absolutely agonizing and wrenching scene, reminiscent of Alan Clark's Scum, a bit like watching an attack by a pack of vicious dogs going after helpless victims, one after another. Alone among the shouting guards gleefully beating their prisoners, one guard stands aside, sobbing amid the din of a breakdown of humanity; it's an evocative scene, a reminder that even within the horror of this grotesque warping of morality and human values, there is hope that not all will succumb to its sway.

    There's not a bad performance or hokey line of dialogue in the entire film, but Fassbender's performance in particular is nothing short of mesmerizing. He's an absolute revelation in this film, in both the scene with the priest and the latter third of the film, as he starves himself to death. Milligan and McMahon deliver strong performances as well, and Graham, who is tasked with conveying the weight of the moral self-judgement of the prison guard almost entirely in silence, is remarkable as well, in particular when we see him suddenly shift from the melancholy introspection of the earlier scenes to acts of shocking violence.

    McQueen doesn't hold back in showing us the ugliness of the conditions in which the prisoners are living, and the animalistic way in which they are treated. This, he shows us, is a place where the only human dignity left is that which you can hold onto inside. Beatings, forced bathings and body cavity checks are the tip of the iceberg here; these are conditions that would have PETA beating down the doors if animals were being treated this way, and the knowledge that these are human beings abusing other human beings in this way makes it almost unbearably difficult to watch at times. His direction is solid and unflinching from start to finish.

    The film is graphically, brutally violent, but under the circumstances the violence isn't gratuitous, however difficult it may be to stomach. It's a cinema verité approach to viewing human dignity in the face of unimaginable indignities, a grim statement about what happens when differences of opinion in social and political matters lead men to treat other men with horrific cruelty.

    Close camera shots within the prison cells evoke sweltering claustrophobia, and the unflinching lens of McQueen's camera brings us no relief from the brutality to which we are witnesses. This is a violent film, but there is masterful artistry at work as well. To be perfectly fair, McQueen and Walsh don't address the circumstances that led to these men being incarcerated, and the years of The Troubles in Northern Ireland were permeated with violence on both sides; Hunger, though, focuses on these particular men at this particular time, and it's a brilliant, inevitably harrowing portrayal of a tragic moment in human history.
  • odonoghuematthew
    November 4, 2009
    odonoghuematthew
    Hard hitting. Great lead performance. 20 minute one shot scene in the middle of the film covers scene of the year.
  • alexbasketball
    November 2, 2009
    alexbasketball
    this came off to me as one of those dark southern type movies, that lurched along with its pace yet kept you fixed. there wasnt much dialog and when there was it was the longest 2 person dialog single shot scene ive ever seen. visually, great lengths taken by the actors to get bo...( read more)dies so thin and a this is one id really recommend for you guys to watch (esspecially tim).
  • jschartrand
    October 27, 2009
    jschartrand
    While there's something really personnal and awesome in the way this *experience* is treated, i'm not sure for the deconstruction and it's end by being too long. But well, there's a lot of awesome moments anyway.
  • Robinollysays
    October 22, 2009
    Robinollysays
    Probably one of the most powerful and moving films i've ever watched. But cinematically this is a piece of art and is stunning. Some of the best scenes come when there is nothing said and and the camera is just absorbing the tension. Fassbender is one of the most incredible metho...( read more)d actors I have seen in years, he is triumphant, reminds me of Christian Bales performance in The Machinist. If this doesnt get an oscar nomination i'll be stunned..
  • mvieaddict
    October 20, 2009
    mvieaddict
    The story of Bobby Sands takes about half way into the film. The most dialogue in the films occurs during the scenes between Sands and his priest. Unfortunately the Irish accents are thick, but I understood what its all about. The final scenes in the film are tough to watch as we...( read more) witness Sands' slowly dying of starvation. It is hard to imagine anyone throwing themselves to such suffering. Fassbender is very good in the role, giving us a character that is perfect in his choices and beliefs. He believes his suffering serves a purpose, and though some may disagree with his choices, one can't help but admire his conviction.

    Im still speechless.
    Photobucket

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Critic Reviews

April 16, 2009
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Hunger is not about the rights and wrongs of the British in Northern Ireland, but about inhumane prison conditions, the steeled determination of IRA members like Bobby Sands, and a rock and a hard place. full review

April 10, 2009
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

Hunger -- the disturbing, provocative, brilliant feature debut from British director Steve McQueen -- does for modern film what Caravaggio did to Renaissance painting. full review

April 9, 2009
Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

This is strong stuff, a tour of hell on Earth presented in scenes of unbearable tension and pulse-spiking violence. Hunger ends as something else, though, in a vision of transcendence and grace. full review

March 26, 2009
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

A visually ravishing tour of hell and a meditation on freedom that at best is wordlessly profound and at worst interestingly obscure. full review

March 23, 2009
David Edelstein, New York Magazine

It's rigorous, evocative, and, in spite of its grisly imagery, elegant. It's a triumph -- of masochistic literal-mindedness. full review

March 20, 2009
Kyle Smith, New York Post

Regardless of politics, one must grant McQueen's substantial gifts, which bring to mind Paul Greengrass in another Northern Ireland film, Bloody Sunday. full review

March 20, 2009
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

With calm, deliberate attention -- an approach at once compassionate and dispassionate -- Hunger explores physical extremity and political extremism. full review

March 19, 2009
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Shockingly immediate and philosophically reflective, Hunger is an indelibly moving tribute to what makes us human. full review

March 18, 2009
Armond White, The New York Press

As prison-movie machismo, Walter Hill's Undisputed is better; as visual art, Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments is superior. full review

October 30, 2008
Nigel Andrews, The Financial Times

McQueen understands the first principle of cinema. On either side of its middle section, where the very wordiness stands ironic witness to the ultimate impossibility to explain, Hunger has the power a... full review

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