Filmmakers have long steered clear of the Irish famine, a trauma of starvation, poverty and suffering that remains a sacred national topic.
Cinemagoers flocked to the film’s opening weekend, making it the biggest grossing Irish film in Ireland this year with a box office of €444,000 (£395,000).
“The kind of Irish film John Ford might have made if he’d been inclined to move beyond the wistful paddywhackery of The Quiet Man.”
Now, 170 years after a million people died and more than a million emigrated, comes Black 47, a big-screen blockbuster that uses the famine as a western-style revenge thriller.