This is a very fun and light-hearted film that is impossible not to like. Based on a French novel that has also been adapted a couple of times in France, the story is transported to Ireland and concerns the rivalry between the kids from two villages. Carrickdowse and Ballydowse are separated by a bridge, and in the evenings after school, mobs of boys meet in the fields and fight each other with sticks and rocks and set new and ever-changing border lines. The 'war' reaches new levels when a new form of trophy-taking comes into play, whereby the groups capture a member from the opposing village and cut off the buttons from his shirts and rip his clothes. In order to fight this war, the Carrickdowse leader Fergus orders his soldiers to assemble all buttons and threads they can find, so that they aren't punished by their parents if they are captured and then return home without any clothes. "War of the Buttons" is something of a family-classic in Ireland these days. Watching it all these years later I can appreciate the fine cast of actors that the film was able to gather. This was by no means a low-budget movie, it's more along the lines of "The Commitments" in terms of the international investment it received than anything else made in Ireland. It was produced by David Puttnam, who had produced a Best Picture Oscar-winner with "Chariots of Fire" in the 80s, and the screenplay was written by Colin Welland, who also won an Oscar for that one. That was quite a considerable pedigree behind it. Amongst the cast there is Liam Cunningham, who was only really starting out on the screen in 1994, and the always solid Colm Meaney. The young cast all did a great job, too, and the cinematography was spot-on in visually reconstructing an Ireland from the 1960s/70s.
