Things suddenly turn darker when Damien visits a farm owned by the venerable Peggy (Mary Riordan) to say his goodbyes. A bunch of Black & Tans (British "peacekeeping" troops) turn up and announce that all public meetings, including games, are banned. During hostile questioning, Peggy's grandson, Micheail (Laurence Barry), who doesn't speak English, is taken into the barn and beaten to death.

From the one-dimensional way in which the thuggish Black and Tans are portrayed, it's pretty clear Loach and Laverty also have in mind a much more contemporary example of a foreign power sending in troops to a less-developed country and brutalizing its recalcitrant inhabitants. As Damien is finally convinced to stay and fight, pic looks like it will develop into a smart parallel between waning British imperialism of the last century and U.S. foreign policy of the present.

To the delight of his friends, and especially his activist brother, Teddy (Padraic Delaney), Damien signs up with the Irish Republican Army. Operating in small guerrilla groups, they steal weapons from a police barracks and -- in a brief but effectively brutal sequence in a bar -- gun down some British officers.

With its sudden, almost casual violence, which doesn't linger over the bloody details, there's an impressive intensity to these opening reels. With occasional assist from George Fenton's score, the picture moves forward even while the viewer is still trying to work out the exact relationships between the main characters.

As the Brits round up prisoners in reprisal, Teddy's guerrilla group is caught and Teddy himself horrifically tortured. Saved at the last moment from execution, Damien, Teddy & Co. head for the hills. But their early idealism is soon complicated by political events between London and Dublin.

Following the Anglo-Irish Peace Agreement, which formed the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Empire, the brothers find themselves pitted against each other, with Teddy supporting the Free Staters (as a practical solution to the independence struggle) but Damien still pursuing the IRA's dream of a totally independent Ireland.

Ackroyd's textured photography, stressing natural light and awash with greens and browns, convincingly conjures up a period prior to electric light. Production design and costuming look equally natural. Pic's title comes from a traditional ditty heard near the start, about foreign chains that bind us.