In Our Name DVD Review

• 27th Apr 2011

The dedication at the end of Brian Welsh’s dark drama – to former soldiers serving prison sentences – says a lot about the director’s motivation; it’s a film not about the horror of war itself, but the way it manifests itself psychologically, and bleeds into the personal lives of those subjected to it.

The protagonist, Suzy (an excellent Joanne Froggatt), is a young soldier who returns from Iraq at the start of the film, joining her husband, Tony (Drew Horsley), also a soldier, and young daughter. Though she handles herself well amongst the macho camaraderie of her returning squaddies, it’s evident early on that she might have trouble adjusting to civilian life. Haunted by flashbacks to a tragic incident during her last tour, she has trouble functioning as a wife and mother, much to the frustration of Tony, who at first appears to be coping much better, but who is himself not untouched by the war, which has left him hardened and prone to violence.

As the film progresses, the psychological effects of war on each of the soldiers become more and more evident, as Suzy becomes disturbingly over-protective of her daughter and Tony begins to show psychotic tendencies, both of which are brought to their shocking, logical conclusions in Suzy’s running away with her daughter and Tony’s brutal assault on a Pakistani taxi driver.

To its credit, In Our Name seldom degenerates into a polemic on the war, instead focussing purely on the personal aspects of the soldiers’ lives. There are no overt political comments, but there are subtler statements in Welsh’s work, like the way parallels are drawn between the grim derelict housing estates of the north-western town and the ravaged urban landscape of Basra.

What In Our Name does so well is to strip off the gloss of ‘heroism’ applied to returning troops so often by the gutter press and show them as they are: ordinary people put through horrific situations and then expected to adapt comfortably into civilian life. As the sombre dedication Welsh finishes on demonstrates, this is often not the case.

Adam Richardson