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The Spanish Civil War as seen through the eyes of a working-class kid from Liverpool. Ian Hart (best known for impersonating John Lennon in THE HOURS AND TIMES and BACKBEAT) plays David, an idealistic young Communist who heads for Barcelona in 1936. By fighting alongside the Spanish Republicans, he hopes, he'll be helping to nip Fascism in the bud, but he's quickly embroiled in bitter factionalism and a brutal new brand of warfare. Director Ken Loach (RIFF-RAFF; LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD) succeeds brilliantly in rendering history as something genuine and immediate, but he insists on refighting some very old battles here. Jim Allen's screenplay romanticizes the anarchist and Trotskyite factions of the Republican Army at the expense of Communist cadres (anachronistically described as "Stalinists"); consequently, this left-wing film too often feels like one more pointless dance on the grave of Soviet Communism.