tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham
Director: Steve McQueen
Release Date: December 05, 2008 (Limited)
Running Time: 90 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Icon Entertainment

- - -

Hunger doesn’t merely base the name of its title from the 1981 IRA Hunger Strikes in Ireland but it comprehends the meaning of the word hunger and how the human soul craves to achieve something in their life that is worthwhile and how the craving resides elsewhere in faith and existentialism.
 
Steve McQueen's debut feature is both hypnotic and consuming, and it begins with a hypnotic middle-aged man getting ready to go to his job that seems to be undoubtedly consuming him. He’s a guard at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. He takes it very seriously and we get a glimpse of his self-worth as he gets ready to leave; he unfolds his crisp shirt and sweater and slips into his neatly ironed khaki slacks all of which were folded with obsessive care. After his breakfast he checks under his car to make sure no explosives have been planted there, and then drives off to work. It is details like these that make McQueen’s film spellbinding. He’s forever engrossed by the minute details and specific characteristics that make up the human anatomy. From this prison guard, McQueen will then focus on two cellmates living in their own human excrement and freedom fighter Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), the martyr who initiated the second hunger strike while in jail in order so IRA inmates can be granted political rights and status. The person able to grant such rights was PM Margaret Thatcher (in the film we only hear her voice) who famously declared that “crime is crime is crime; it’s not political.”