Hunger (2008)
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Reviews Counted: 115
Fresh: 104 | Rotten: 11
Unflinching, uncompromising, vivid and vital, Steve McQueen's challenging debut is not for the faint hearted, but it's still a richly rewarding retelling of troubled times.
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Critic Reviews: 28
Fresh: 25 | Rotten: 3
Unflinching, uncompromising, vivid and vital, Steve McQueen's challenging debut is not for the faint hearted, but it's still a richly rewarding retelling of troubled times.
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Movie Info
The final months of Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican Army activist who protested his treatment at the hands of British prison guards with a hunger strike, are chronicled in this historical drama, the first feature film from artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen. Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) is an IRA volunteer who is sentenced to Belfast's infamous Maze prison, where he shares a cell with fellow IRA member Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon). Like most of the IRA volunteers behind bars, Gillen and
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Cast
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Brian Milligan
Davey Gillen -
Liam McMahon
Gerry Campbell -
Michael Fassbender
Bobby Sands -
Liam Cunningham
Father Dominic Moran -
Stuart Graham
Raymond Lohan -
Laine Megaw
Raymond's Wife -
Frank McCusker
The Governor -
Karen Hassan
Gerry's Girlfriend
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All Critics (117) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (109) | Rotten (11) | DVD (7)
Midway through the movie there's an epic 24-minute scene...in the claustrophobic cell block the protesters have already internalized their cause so deeply that the world of words seems distant and inconsequential.
Top CriticIt's a strength of this carefully composed, almost obsessively controlled picture that it has no interest in the conventional biographical focus on a subject.
Hunger is daunting and powerful work.
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.
Hunger -- the disturbing, provocative, brilliant feature debut from British director Steve McQueen -- does for modern film what Caravaggio did to Renaissance painting.
Relying on images more than words, it's a plea for humanity in times of insanity.
In the desolate surrounds of a prison environment that affronts humanity McQueen finds the redemptive struggles, and unrelenting spirit in the feces smeared walls of a British prison.
...simultaneously harsh and gentle; an early shot of a tiny snowflake melting on bloodied knuckles could serve as the movie's logo.
Hunger will leave you feeling emotionally battered and bruised -- yet emerging from the cinema a stronger person for having witnessed such a beautiful and brutal film.
Not just the toughest film of the year but amongst the toughest ever made.
Hunger is tough going -- and compelling cinema throughout.
Politically, Bobby Sands' suicide meant nothing, but it illustrated poisonous lengths to which someone would go in protecting the only reality he ever knew. This is terrorism's pox, and why the Troubles - though stabilized - still bear the scars of shame.
As pretentious as it is engrossing...
Director Steve McQueen delivers one the more memorable debut features of the last several years.
a film of great visceral directness and emotional power
A poetic, almost abstract take on very real, tangible material -- a fitting artistic approach to a surreal, extreme experience most human beings will not have on their own.
Mercifully devoid of stirring speeches and a sweeping music score, Hunger is as different from standard political biopic as can be imagined.
... a study in the deterioration of the human body... and the will it takes to endure such self-mortification in the name of cause.
[A] hard, harsh film, a triumph of the new realism that is transforming British film at the moment...
A fitting, posthumous tribute to a martyr who freely sacrificed his own life to highlight the horror of man's inhumanity to his fellow man.
Spurious transcendence and underlined symbolism
Yes, "Hunger" is a fairly nasty affair and we don't even get to the starvation part until the third act.
Audience Reviews for Hunger
Super Reviewer
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- The Governor: There is no such thing as political murder, political bombing, political violence. There is only criminal murder, criminal bombing, and criminal violence. There will be no political status.
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Foreign Titles
- Hunger (2008) (CA)
- Hunger (2008) (ES)
