Fleapit revisited:Danny Boy.

"The dead have questions for you. You need to answer them" - Gavin Wood.

Sam Miller's Danny Boy (BBC2/iPlayer) was a thoroughly compelling look at what war does to men and what men do at war. It asked important questions about how the army, the British army, and its men must be 'better' than their enemy and if they're not, what's even the point of them? But it was far more nuanced than that.

It pondered the grey area between war and arrest/restraint and it asked why, after turning men into killing machines, we are surprised or angered when they kill. It also, perhaps most movingly of all, bravely showed how males, these males specifically - soldiers, deal with, or often don't deal with, their mental health. Especially when they return from war to home life - only to find the war isn't as ready to leave them as they are it.

In May 2004, a platoon of British soldiers is ambushed in Southern Iraq and the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment is sent to help them. One of that regiment is the young Corporal Brian Wood (Anthony Boyle) and, while in action, he kills a man he believes to be an enemy combatant and, with his men, takes several others hostage.

For this, he is invited to Buckingham Palace to proudly receive a military cross for gallantry. But not long after this decoration, he is taken to a dimly lit office by the Royal Military Police and shown photos from what has become known as 'The Battle of Danny Boy'. Photos of blindfolded and beaten detainees.

Wood is accused of mistreating prisoners and going against the 'rules of engagement'. As his father, Gavin (an excellent Alex Ferns), has it "they give you a medal with one hand and knock your teeth out with the other". Human rights lawyer Phil Shiner (Toby Jones) sees it a bit differently. Shiner believes, knows, that "British soldiers get away with murder" and is still angry that the case against those that killed twenty-six year old Iraqi hostage Baha Mousa in Basra mostly failed.

One man, Corporal Donald Payne, pleaded guilty to inhumane treatment and served one year in jail as well as being expelled from the army. But Mousa's post-mortem revealed ninety-three separate injuries and the evidence pointed quite clearly to the fact that he had been assaulted in custody by several serving British soldiers.

Shiner's mission is to not let the case of the Battle of Danny Boy pass without justice but has he been blinded by his own passions and prejudices. Is he, despite himself - and the assistance of his colleagues Deena (Kiran Sonia Sarwar) and Patrick (Tom Vaughan-Lawler), failing to look at the full picture?

Shiner uncovers evidence that suggests there were possibly as many as twenty unlawful killings in Amarah (the site of Danny Boy) and he also casts serious doubt on Wood's testament that those victims and prisoners were soldiers. Instead, they claim to be innocent Iraqi farmers simply in the wrong place (their own country) at the wrong time.

The battlefield action is interspersed with court scenes and those of Shiner working late into the night in his office as well as, most affectingly of all, Wood's home life. A loving husband to Lucy (Leah McNamara) and father to Bailey (whose name is tattooed proudly on Wood's left forearm), what appears to be some form of post-traumatic stress disorder is affecting his marriage and his parents, Gavin and Margaret (Pauline Turner) are besides themselves with worry about him.

Is he a war hero or, as his son asks him at bedtime, is he a murderer? Can he be both at the same time? Is that the nature of war? Boyle's powerful performance as Wood has you siding with him even as the evidence mounts up against him. Even as you know justice must be served.

Wood seems to have bought into the idea that everyone in Iraq, every Iraqi, is a potential threat to his life and the life of his men. In a speech we see him give to younger soldiers, he talks about his desire to "destroy" the enemy. It doesn't sit easily with his role as a gentle and loving father.

One very moving exchange between Gavin and Lucy outlined the danger men do to themselves when they bottle everything up and a later one between Gavin and his son proved equally poignant. Of course, I had a little cry - even as I had no idea, right up until the very end, how this situation would pan out.

There was a lot of jogging in Danny Boy - and a lot of piling up of corpses. But underneath it all there was a beating human heart and everyone involved (special shout out to Sarah Niles as Stella Marshall, just because she's been in so many good things lately) did a fantastic job in bringing this film (based on a true story) to life. For me, the strongest commendation of all goes to Alex Ferns as Gavin. A man from a different, crueller, age trying to come to terms with both his own vulnerability and that which his son has inherited from him. 

At one point in Danny Boy, Brian Wood wonders why, in Iraq, such young men are sent to fight wars for their country and suffer the consequences. As a very young man himself, he may want to ask the same question of his own country.