THE SIEGE OF JADOTVILLE FULL RUNDOWN AND REVIEW!! HEROES!!

Jamie Dornan faces down an army of 3,000 mercenaries in Netflix's war film The Siege of Jadotville. Released 7th October, the film stars Dornan as Commandant Pat Quinlan, the soldier who led an Irish troop of UN peacekeepers during the Congo Crisis of the early 1960s.

The Northern Irish actor went through weeks of intense preparation at a boot camp in South Africa, undergoing the same kind of training that Quinlan would have gone through. The film's director, Richie Smyth, was adamant that the cast should all be given proper military training: "There’s nothing worse than watching actors acting like they’re in an action movie, pretending to run upstairs with guns and look serious," he says. "The best way to get them to do that realistically is just to train them to be soldiers, so I did." Which I think is wicked.

Fans who know Dornan best know him as the sharp-suited Christian Grey from Fifty Shades of Grey may be surprised by his rougher appearance here, but Smyth says he can't compare the characters – as he refuses to watch the raunchy S&M hit just like me. "That was a very simple choice for me," Smyth says. "I was walking on the set with him one morning, and I just said to him, 'Mate, I really don’t want to see you naked.’ And he said, ‘That’s alright – I don’t want to see you naked either!’"

The film follows the epic events of a 1961 siege, a little-known chapter of history in which Quinlan's inexperienced and badly equipped troops held back a far larger army of Katangese mercenaries. "These 150 kids had never really been outside of Ireland in their lives," says Smyth. "Most of them were given World War II equipment and clothes, because we were so backward at the time... They fought like heroes," he continues. "It’s the only time in modern Irish history when they fought against an enemy singlehandedly – not as a collective with other countries – and kicked their arses." That's why you don't mess with the Irish.

However, the events of the siege are still not well known in Britain and Ireland as the Irish UN force were ordered to keep quiet about their service in Jadotville, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. "That’s what’s so incredible about it," explains Smyth. "In 1961, when they came home, literally no-one talked about it... it was a hush-hush thing." Don't worry if you don't know why I'll explain to the best of my knowledge as no one knows an awful lot.

To uncover the real experiences of Quinlan and his troops, Smyth met with survivors from the siege, and their families – and ended up casting Quinlan's grandson, Conor, in the film. While praising the bravery of the soldiers at Jadotville, Smyth hints that there was also a darker side to the UN's involvement in the area, which led to the soldiers' enforced silence. "It may come across as just an action movie, but there’s a whole geo-political storyline running through it," says Smyth. "Without giving too much away – as it's a story most people don't know – there was a much bigger agenda going on." Some messed up stuff right them poor soldiers everything they went through and couldn't even get medals or anything because of how the UN handled it. I'm glad they have finally got some recognition for there heroism. Check it out on netflix #CAF #MsaNewsandViews