Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point) got a well-deserved BAFTA in this gut wrenching film written by Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) and Guy Hibbert.The story of a 1998 bombing that claimed 29 lives and injured over 200 shows the struggle against political stonewalling and cover-up by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and government authorities.Imagine a father's surprise when he finds out that the authorities knew about the blast beforehand and did nothing. You can imagine the families of the victims of the September 11th bombings in this country and the suspicion of a cover-up. There was a real cover-up here.Gerard McSorley (Veronica Guerin, The Constant Gardener) led a stellar cast that included Michele Forbes as his wife.NOTE: Justice was not served with criminal prosecutions, but there was a successful civil suit after the OJ Simpson civil suit.

In 1998 the so-called Real IRA (a split from the original IRA that didn't agree with the peace process in Northern Ireland) exploded a 200 kg bomb in one of the most crowded streets of the city of Omagh. More than 30 dead, hundreds of wounded people... No one were judged for those crimes. The politicians were afraid that the peace process might end and just "let it be"."Omagh" approaches to those facts from the point of view of the victims. The initial shock, the confusion, the anxiety... The first half hour of the movie is just hair-raising, and if you're a very sensitive person you should't see it. For the rest of you: the film is just superb, and it isn't gruesome at all. Pete Travis shows the facts as they were, but so carefully and with a style that makes the movie look like a documentary.The work of the actors is outstanding, for it's so hard to play that kind of characters (they're so emotional).*My rate: 8/10

I do not believe I have ever seen a movie that more truthfully and compellingly captures tragedy than Pete Travis's Omagh.Omagh tells the story of the 1998 Real IRA bombing that killed 29 people in the city of Omagh, Northern Ireland, and the aftermath that followed. Yet what endears me to this film is that this could have been any town, any family, any tragedy. The film is completely without frills. It is one of the few films I've seen that does not romanticize death and tragedy. It has no towering musical score telling your emotions where to go (there is no score at all, actually), no dramatic final words, no sanguine epitaphs. Instead, Travis shows us what the camera usually leaves out -- the dirty dishes after the funeral party has left your house, the ubiquitous reporters asking for pictures of the deceased, the kind but nuisance of a neighbor offering help when you just want to be left alone.The technical aspects of the film were all very well done, as were the actors' performances. Everything about the film makes you feel as though you are looking through a window into what really happened at Omagh, rather than watching an screen adaptation of the events. Omagh is well worth a see.

Another one of these "Those IRA people were such heartless bastards!" movies the Irish like to make every couple years or so just to annoy people, Omagh explores one father's quest to Bring The IRA To Justice when his son, along with scores of other people, are blown up in Omagh's city square. He rather reluctantly chooses to be the leader of a group of people looking for justice, then becomes quite obsessed by it. And before you can answer the bonus question boys and girls, YES! His home life does suffer from it! So as you can see, this is highly formulatic and easily predictable stuff here, made to get people's rabbles roused. Not half as good as the amazing Bloody Sunday movie that was made a few years back, Omagh hardly veers beyond Irish TV Movie Of The Week.