October 2, 2002 | Actions speak louder and more coherently than words in Bloody Sunday, Paul Greengrass' brutally gripping yet coolly distanced drama about the massacre of Irish Catholic protesters by British troops during a civil rights march in the Northern Ireland town of Derry on Jan. 30, 1972.

Sternly avoiding the heart-tugging tricks and sentimental characterizations of manipulative melodrama, Greengrass strips his true-life tale to its raw essentials while filming in a style best described as faux melodrama.

It doesn't matter whether you're seeing a stolen moment shared by two young lovers, or a tight-lipped confab among British officers in a strategy session, or a horrendous street scene that steadily escalates while bringing out the worst in stone-throwing militants and gun-toting soldiers. Each scene appears to be recorded on the sly, stealthily filmed with a herky-jerky, hand-held camera. The colors are bleached, the images are stark. You get the impression that you're witnessing random shots of cinema verité, not a meticulously designed narrative, as Bloody Sunday carries you through key events of a single day - before, during and after the infamous massacre - with the relentless inevitability of Greek tragedy.

Everyone seems to be talking at the same time - mostly, but not exclusively, in thick Irish accents - and a good 30 to 50 percent of the dialogue is well-nigh indecipherable. (I'm looking forward to watching a DVD version of the film, so I can click on the "English subtitles" option.) And yet, remarkably enough, the movie rarely is too confusing to easily follow. Even amid the most cacophonous din, key phrases are perfectly, chillingly clear: "We're planning a peaceful march." "Our job is to catch these hooligans." "Those weren't rubber bullets…"

Amid the artfully sustained blur of verisimilitude, only a few members of the cast are able to assert themselves as distinct individuals. With a minimum of obvious effort, Tim Pigott-Smith vividly conveys a uniquely colonialist strain of self-righteous monstrousness as Maj. Gen. Ford, commander of British Army ground forces in Northern Ireland. Nicholas Farrell comes off as slightly more sympathetic, if only because he occasionally appears torn by grave doubts and second thoughts, as Brigadier Patrick Maclellan.

The most affecting performance comes from James Nesbitt as Ivan Cooper, the Parliament minister and civil rights activist who evokes the nonviolent spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King while organizing the ill-fated march in Derry. Nesbitt wants to protest the British government's policy of "internment without trial" for allegedly dangerous militants in Northern Ireland. (Sound familiar?) After the massacre, however, Nesbitt mournfully recognizes that nonviolence has been discredited, perhaps permanently, and more violent opposition will grow.

Addressing representatives of the British government, he delivers his grievously prescient judgment: "You have given the IRA the biggest victory it will ever have. You will reap the whirlwind."