The week’s DVDs begin in Northern Ireland:

DVDs and streaming for 30 by Boo Allen

This week, we begin in Northern Ireland:

’71 (***)

After being tortured in a Japanese prison camp while playing Louis Zamperini in Unbroken, Jack O’Connell now plays a British soldier caught in a harrowing labyrinth in Northern Ireland. O’Connell is Gary Hook, a raw British private sent to 1971 Belfast, a teeming battleground for Protestants fighting Catholics fighting the British fighting everyone. Hook and his unit find themselves trying to break up an escalating riot when he becomes separated from his squad. Completely lost in this gray indistinguishable inferno, Hook finds his own Virgils in the forms of a hardened boy and a sympathetic young woman. They steer Hook away from the marauding gangs in search of him and bent on his death. Director Yann Demange, from Gregory Burke’s script, draws out the sequence of tense situations, with the wounded Hook scampering from one safe site to another. Of course, Hook’s clandestine meanderings bring to mind John Ford’s seminal 1935 The Informer, in which Victor McLaglen earned an Best Actor Oscar for stealthily creeping around Dublin all night. The violent journey in ’71 includes shoot-outs, explosions, and even fist-fights in a community in which it seems no one trusts anyone.

Rated R, 99 minutes.

Extras: commentary with director, producer and writer.

The Gunman (**1/2)

Sean Penn plays action hero in this non-stop thriller from Pierre Morel, the action-oriented director of Taken and The Transporter films. Despite having a male cast filled with some of the best movie actors working today (Penn, Javier Bardem, Mark Rylance, Idris Elba), Morel accentuates what he does best by thrusting Penn, as Jim Terrier, into an international conspiracy that sends him across Europe. At the beginning, Terrier, along with several comrades, assassinates a Congo government official. Everyone escapes. Flash to eight years later and Terrier works for an NGO in Congo building wells. One day, assassins narrowly miss killing him. He ends up in London talking to an old teammate (Rylance) who sends Terrier on to Barcelona and another former contact (Bardem). From there, Terrier flees to Gibraltar where an Interpol officer (Elba) learns of Terrier’s presence and even tries to help him uncover the intricate corporate plan to kill Terrier and the men who made up his Congo squad. Along the way, Terrier has numerous shoot-outs, fights, explosions, and various other confrontations that make the film one long comic book sequence.

Rated R, 116 minutes. Available in various combo packs.

While We’re Young (**1/2)

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts star in this latest angst-fest from writer-director Noah Baumbach. They play Josh and Cornelia, a New York couple dealing with the rapid encroachment of wrinkles, gray hair, arthritis, fading eyesight, and a diminution of energy and sexual activity. Their interest in life seems to rise with the acquaintance of two twenty-somethings, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). The younger couple drag the oldsters out to various events and activities, making Josh and Cornelia realize how much they have missed, but also making them realize how they no longer want to desperately attempt to keep up with younger people. Eventually, Jamie maneuvers Josh, a documentary film-maker, into helping him, Jamie, on his own project. Cornelia’s father, Leslie (Charles Grodin), a retired yet distinguished documentarian, views it all skeptically and somewhat critically. Baumbach has much to say about false friends, loyalty, and aging and our acceptance of it, even if he does it with a heavy-hand. Woody Allen has covered much of the same material but with more humor and finely drawn characters.

Rated R, 97 minutes.

Extras: some half dozen or so “behind-the-scenes” featurettes totaling around 45 minutes on the cast, working with Baumbach, working with Charles Grodin, and more.

Danny Collins (***)

Al Pacino stars as the title character, a rapidly aging one-time rock icon who decides it’s time to finally make amends to many he has wronged over the years. In the fact-based story, forty years earlier, John Lennon had written Danny a letter of encouragement but that was subsequently lost. Danny only learns of it when his manager (Christopher Plummer) discovers it for him and gives it to him. The letter propels Danny to remedy past misdeeds. First, he ditches his much younger wife before heading out for a reconciliation attempt with the son he never knew, Tom (Bobby Cannavale) and his wife Samantha (Jennifer Garner). While Tom resents his father for missing his childhood, Danny tries to make amends by using his celebrity to help his sickly young grandson. Annette Bening plays a sympathetic hotel manager. Former Disney scribe Dan Fogelman (Cars, Bolt, Tangled) makes his directing debut with quick humor with a pronounced attempt for redemption.

Rated R, 106 minutes

Also on DVD and streaming: Before You Know It, Bullish, Get Hard, Last Knights.