This film is TROUBLE

What do you mean Americans? I understood it before watching, I'm not a millennial, therefore have a knowledge of history.

Even people directly involved in the conflict had difficulty understanding the different factions and sub-factions.
Being American doesn't make you special. In fact, if your sole quarrel is that Americans can't understand it, the only response is a cheeky "So what?"! 

That's true---I'm American, and even though I knew a little history about the wars and the IRA in Ireland, the part where all the various factions were fighting among each other was very confusing, because I couldn't tell who supposed to be with who or why they were against each other. Still a good film,though.

The older IRA men were from the old school, not looking for a race war but fighting for equal treatment and political rights, with catholic and protestant members. Then as it looked like they were going to get a power sharing agreement, with more voting rights, civil rights, better education, economic prospects, the 'unionists' tried to derail this change, much like white south Africans or white southern Americans who saw equal treatment as an attack on them, as they would be demoted from their privileged position.

Riots, strikes, house burnings and murder broke out, with ethnic tensions being stirred, distracting from the civil rights issue. The IRA originally tried to not be dragged into this ethnic violence, trying to stay high minded and fight for all communities in Ireland to be independent and equal, and not be dragged into a racial civil war. The problem was, most IRA support was catholic as this was the community worse off and most in need of change and most Unionist support was protestant, a community that did not want to give up their superior situation and were against change, so when Catholics were being attacked by protestants, a lot of IRA supporters wanted to fight back. I Ran Away became a common graffiti tag as the IRA leaders tried to not get involved in reprisal killings. The British army occupation originally began to defend the Catholics from the racist violence, which made things very complicated as the IRA was at war with the British government, but a lot of its supporters were supposedly being protected by the British army. Only those people the army was sent to protect did not trust the official story, they saw they were being arrested more, being raided more, being killed more by soldiers, some of whom openly favoured the Unionist side and were racist towards the Celtic population, and that the army was being used to back up the RUC, an extremely racist, violent, abusive, and overwhelming protestant police service, as shown in this movie as soldiers try to keep the people back while the police are openly beating suspects who are not resisting, in full view of the crowd.

This is when the IRA split, one group became known as the Old IRA or Official IRA, represented in the movie by the older more reasonable figure who was willing to deal with the British through back channels and was against the escalation in violence and killing of random foot soldiers. The break away faction became the Provisional IRA or Provos, mostly angry younger men, looking for revenge and to strike back against the Protestant angry young men, and got embroiled in a bloody vendetta based dirty war. The Old IRA were trying to negotiate for peace in spite of the chaos. When the groups split, they divided up weapons, cash and territory and tried to stay out of each others way, but the Old IRA saw the Provos as a threat, leading to bloodshed and chaos which would lose them the cause in the long run, the Provos saw the Old IRA as traitors/cowards/old men who were holding the cause back. The two groups did end up killing each other, each trying to save the cause in their own way, but while trying to not seem like the one turning on their own people.

The same thing also happened on the unionist side, with killings amongst the LVF, UDA, Red Hand etc, each fighting to be the leading group that would then get the most supporters, donations, most power to negotiate.

The young guys running around shooting at the soldier, hunting him down, and plotting to murder the older IRA man are part of this new violent splinter faction, the Provos, not interested in appearing reasonable by letting the soldier go home, more interested in protecting their community by making others fear them via bombings and shootings in reprisal for attacks on their people.

Now the MRF are probably the most controversial group to talk about. Essentially they were gangsters employed by the British government, there is no real way to treat the group fairer than that. The very purpose was to incite ethnic tensions and stir the pot between Catholics and Protestants so they would fight each other rather than organise against the government, and both sides would be delegitimised as blood soaked criminals rather than principled political reformers. They helped coordinate terrorist bombings, they carried out drive by shootings in plain clothes, using weapons used by the paramilitaries, against both Catholics and Protestants, though mostly Catholics, to cause more mob violence and damage their credibility. They gunned down unarmed people and lied, they used weapons they were not meant to have to make their murders look like paramilitary killings, they ran double agents on both sides, they helped train Unionist terrorists in bomb making and directed their attacks, they were essentially trying to enflame the conflict, putting everyone in greater danger, police, soldiers, civilians and paramilitaries.

In this movie the MRF are working with the Unionists, directing them to bomb a fenian pub, but the bomb goes off by mistake, they then decide to murder the soldier who knows they are working with terrorists as it is less of a problem than answering questions, and then also play both factions of the IRA against each other, taking tips from the Old IRA in return for a promise to help neuter the more violent radical faction, only to turn around and cut a deal with the more violent Provo IRA man, telling him to kill the moderate. The MRF were true terrorists, trying to breed chaos in Ulster, lying to their superiors about their activities etc. The MRF and what they became under new names are one of the reasons the troubles are so troubled and complex. Even former members of the MRF have called it a legalised death squad.

I think you'll find any conflict hard to understand from a detached point of view.

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Not that hard. Catholic vs. Protestant; pretty easy. However once you get into this convoluted plot I guarantee you'll be confused which is which. Also the accents that are hard on Americans, but you can turn on subtitles if you need it. Anyway I'm watching it now. Well done, but the plot is way too over-the-top. If this covered a whole year then everything that happened in one night here could have occurred. But then a soldier couldn't be stuck in one little neighborhood for a whole year. FUIRA, Fenian Bastards!