The Patriot Game is a vivid, partisan, feature-length documentary on events in Northern Ireland, directed by Arthur MacCaig, an American of Irish descent. Produced in France, the film was completed in 1978, and released in 1980. Kevin J. Kelley writes for The Guardian:
“This extraordinary and moving documentary reviews 10 years of armed warfare by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and places today's headlines in their proper political and economic context. Through vivid footage of street battles and interviews with participants, The Patriot Game forcefully debunks the twin myths that the IRA is a ‘terrorist organization' fighting a ‘religious war.' As the narrator notes early in the film, ‘the two principal forces involved in the war - the British Army and the IRA - have nothing at all to do with religion....'
“Because it persuades rather than sermonizes, The Patriot Game is a good primer for people whose only knowledge of the conflict in Northern Ireland comes through the foggy filter of the U.S. mass media. The protagonists are clearly delineated, and they are permitted to speak for themselves - both directly in interviews and also through the images of gun-toting soldiers running past women with baby-carriages on a Belfast street corner....
“The film is also useful viewing for those leftists in the U.S. who exclusively support the ‘Official' wing of the IRA and who still regard the ‘Provisionals' merely as terrorists lacking any cogent political analysis or program....
“The viewer can...reach his or her own conclusions (about the Northern Ireland conflict) and theorize thoughtfully about current implications after absorbing the lessons of The Patriot Game. As the film so powerfully demonstrates, the essence of the struggle in Northern Ireland is for national liberation and against imperialism. Until its objectives are attained, we are most unlikely to witness any end to ‘the troubles' that have beset the country for the last 60 years.”