MovieChat Forums > The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2007) Discussion > Plot hole?

Plot hole?

posted 11 years ago by JackBluegrass
2 replies | jump to latest

Two British vehicles transporting a few troops were ambushed by a relatively large contingent of armed Irish civilians disbursed across a sloped field. One civilian had a machine gun.

After confirming that all the Brits were dead in the ambush, the insurgents move on to find a few British troops beating and harassing (3?) Irish women at an Irish home.

One Irishman said, "should we attack?", and another replied "we're out of ammunition".

WHAT?

After a successful well-planned ambush - with only one Irish civilian dead - , the Irish fighters would be out of ammunition? Doesn't even seem possible.

Did I miss something?

[–] daddymo 11 years ago

I'm not sure if this is a plothole, JackBluegrass, but I thought that detail was simply ridiculous myself. Are we supposed to believe that the men fired every single round they had during the ambush? And worse, that they didn't pick up any weapons or ammunition from the dead soldiers? Throughout the movie they steal weapons and ammunition; this was an irritating scene for me.

Perhaps the director wanted to give the characters a reason to watch and not break cover. If so, the old "out of ammunition" story was too weak to use. How about the possibility that they would all be killed? Or that if they attacked, the Brits would come back for deadly retribution?

[–] JackBluegrass 11 years ago

Good comments, daddymo!

After I had posted my original comment, I thought of the possibility of relatively untrained fighters taking on the British army in that skirmish.

With inexperience, there is a tendency - out of panic or indecision - to fire weapons willy-nilly in the general direction of "the enemy", and hope something hits. The precision of firearms usage and effective targeting is taught in the military, but the irregulars had no such formal training.

So, a lot of ammunition was essentially wasted by the civilian-soldiers in the ambush, leaving them short of ammunition for the later potential attack at the Irish home..

However, I do think that some of the irregulars are shown taking rifles from dead British soldiers.

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