| Director | Steve McQueen |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama film, historical film, prison film |
| Runtime | 90 min |
| Country | Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Box office | £1.7 million |
In 1981, a new IRA inmate, Davey Gillen, is admitted to the Maze Prison and is categorised as a "non-conforming prisoner" for his refusal to wear the prison uniform outfit. He is sent to his cell naked except for a blanket. His cellmate, Gerry Campbell, has smeared the walls with excrement from floor to ceiling as part of the no wash protest. Gerry's girlfriend sneaks a radio in by wrapping it and storing it in her vagina.
Prison officers forcibly and violently remove the prisoners from their cells and beat them before pinning them down to cut their long hair and beards, grown as part of the no-wash protest. The prisoners resist, with prisoner Bobby Sands spitting into Lohan's face. He responds by punching Sands in the face and then swings again, only to miss and punch the wall, causing his knuckles to bleed. He cuts Sands' hair and beard; the men throw Sands in the bathtub and scrub him clean before hauling him away again.
Later, the prisoners are taken out of their cells and given second-hand civilian clothing. The guards snicker as they hand the clothes to the prisoners, who respond, after Sands' initial action, by tearing up the clothes and wrecking their cells. A large number of riot police enter the prison on a truck. The prisoners are hauled from their cells and forced to run the gauntlet between the lines of riot police, during which they are abused and beaten with batons. Lohan and several of his colleagues then probe prisoners' rectums and mouths, using the same pair of latex gloves for each man.
Lohan visits his catatonic mother in a retirement home. He is shot in the back of the neck by an Irish Republican Army assassin and dies slumped onto his mother's lap.
Sands is visited by Father Dominic Moran and discusses the morality of a hunger strike. Sands tells the priest about a trip to County Donegal where he and his friends found a foal by a stream. It had cut itself on the rocks and broken a back leg. Sands tells the priest that he drowned the foal and that although he got into trouble for it, he knew he had done the right thing by ending the animal's suffering. He says he knows what he is doing and what it will do to him but refuses to stand by and do nothing.
Sometime later, Bobby is well into his hunger strike, suffering from weeping sores, kidney failure, low blood pressure, and stomach ulcers. While Sands lies in a bath, a large orderly comes in to give his usual orderly a break. The orderly sits next to the tub and shows Bobby his knuckles, which are tattooed with the letters "UDA". Sands tries to stand on his own and eventually does so with all his strength, staring defiantly at the orderly but crumples to the floor with no strength left to stand. The orderly carries him to his room. Sands' parents stay for his final days, his mother being at his side when he dies at the age of 27, 66 days after beginning the strike.
A textual epilogue reveals that Sands was elected to the United Kingdom Parliament as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone while he was on the hunger strike. Nine other men died with him during the seven-month strike before it was called off, and Republican paramilitary groups murdered 16 prison officers during the protests. Shortly afterward, the British government conceded in one form or another to virtually all of the prisoners' five demands despite never officially granting them political status.