On HBO.

Kenneth Branagh cast a really cute movie kid Jude Hill to play himself
(Buddy) as a yout', about growing up in Belfast in 1969 as The Troubles
worsen. It's autobiographic. On the one hand, we know the family is going
to leave, given that, well, he grew up to make movies.

Buddy's family is Protestant. But Catholics live on the same block.

His mother is Caitriona Balfe, best known for playing Claire on
Sassenach (Outlander), the time-travelling WWII nurse who may be the
skinniest actress I've ever seen do a nude scene. Not in this movie.

The father is Jaime Dornan, who actually was born in one of the Northern
Ireland counties.

Branaugh must have had a bit of a budget as he cast a de-glammed Judi
Dench as the father's mother. Ciaran Hinds is the father's father, quite
a bit younger than Dench but, well, this guy never looked young. He was
born in Belfast.

Odd that I saw this at the same time I watched the Ken Burns
documentary. Belfast had its Kristallnacht. Homes and businesses of
Catholics were specifically targeted for vandalism and there were some
Catholic men beaten up. They were trying to force Catholics to move into
segregated neighborhoods in Belfast, which I think ended up happening.

Buddy's idyllic childhood lasted about 7 minutes into the movie.

The trouble was started by Protestants and at no point did we see
Catholics acting in a militant manner. The block ended up getting
blocked off with paving stones, wrecked vehicles, and barbed wire. The
entrance to the block was monitored by an older Protestant man.

The local villain Billy Clanton was literally some shithead gangster,
demanding that all the Protestant families either join the "cause" or
pay protection money. Colin Morgan is the bad guy, another born in one
of the Northern Ireland counties.

Note that Billy Clanton was part of the criminal family in Tombstone so
the character's name is no coincidence.

Innocent Buddy is being led astray by his cousin Moira (Lara McDonnell)
who doesn't truly understand what's going on but wants to recruit him
into the "gang". They harass a local Siekh shopkeeper whose wife is
friends with Buddy's mother.

There's no work in Northern Ireland on account of, well, civil war. The
father is generally away doing construction jobs in England. When he's
in, Clanton demands that he join or pay tribute. Clanton has also been
recruiting Buddy's older brother even though their father told them
specifically never to run messages for them or join in at all.

There were big conflicts between the parents. The father bets the ponies
although we don't see it during this period. He owes back taxes that
take substantial portions of his wages and the family barely gets by.
The mother tries to get the tax authority to acknowledge that the debt
was finally cleared, so they find a way to assess taxes for what they
claimed was an even older tax debt.

As the violence gets worse, the father wants to move the family away but
the mother clings to her old life and old neighborhood, rarely having
left the place.

But the world she's nostalgic for and the neighbors she loved are simply
no longer there and the father is rightly concerned that they'll lose
both sons to the war.

Moira drags Buddy into another disturbance, this time attacking a
Catholic-owned grocery store. She orders Buddy to steal necessities, so
he grabs a name brand box of heavily advertised laundry detergent
"because it's biological". The mother somehow figures out that her
younger son is in trouble, runs to the shop in the midst of the violence
and drags Buddy and the cousin out, threatening to murder the cousin if
she ever drags Buddy into a similar situation in future.

But Clanton grabs them as hostages when confronted by the British army.
The father is there. Apparently an excellent cricketer, he makes an
amazingly accurate throw with a paving brick and knocks the gun out of
Clanton's hand before he can shoot the wife. She's able to shove Clanton
away and grabs the kids to run off.

Huh. This convinces her that there's no reason to stay.

The grandfather has died of a wee bit of trouble with one of his lungs,
probably black lung having been a coal miner. The grandmother remains.

The family moves to a home provided by the construction company in a
London suburb and they hope for a brighter future.

I thought I'd dislike it but it was better than I expected. Still,
Branaugh didn't truly give us much of a picture of the violence on both
sides, especially the bombings and revenge killings and the British
soldiers -- essentially kids -- making lousy policemen and sometimes
making the violence worse.