This is a direct quote from one such plot synopsis: "Sands had been jailed on firearms offences he was accused of committing as part of the IRA's deadly campaign to end British rule of Northern Ireland and unite the Protestant-dominated province with the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland."

As I predicted last week, what a sad mish-mash of half-accurate, half-deluded, half-insulting caricature that is.

The film-maker, Steve McQueen — if only — has this to say defending the graphic depiction of the hungerstrikes and the brutality of prison warders.

"Like in any situation ... you use the things that you've got at your disposal," explains the 38-year-old London-born artist.

"In that case, it was the body. Excrement, urine, whatever, you use what you have, they were limited to that."

Of course, there'll be the usual outcry from the media in Great Britain about the anti-British bias of the movie, even though McQueen is actually an official war artist and former winner of the Turner Prize, so is really a monster of their own making.

But what the point should be is that we can only expect the movie industry to invent its own sad, stereotypical tales and film them with moody actors and glamorous actresses.

When it comes to capturing 'real-life' drama, even the most gritty and graphic production amounts to nothing more than a cartoon.

It's only when we actually know the real details, have lived through the real incidents portrayed that we realise, with something of a shock, the fact it's all, er, fiction. For decades, smug buffs in Britain have been sneering at US war movies of the Second World War, even most recently about the abduction by the US Navy of the credit for breaking the Enigma code.

That attitude followed Hollywood into Korea, Vietnam and now even into Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Americans, we assume, believe those movies 'tell it like it is'. That's certainly what the publicists plaster over every TV advert and poster.

But a whole series of British and Irish movies — if there are such things, given it's always US money and distributors flogging the show — have been to the 'province' and delivered product which has told it 'like it is'. Except it's been 'like it isn't' or 'wasn't'.

I, for one, have had enough. Of course, the movies are biased. You aren't going to make a sexy drama about an undersecretary of state in the NIO during the dark days of the late 70s.

No one's going to do a biopic of former Ombudsman and serial inquiry chairman Maurice Hayes. No one, certainly, is going to do a 'life' of some anonymous cop who didn't live beyond switching on the ignition in his car.

The focus will always be on what movie-makers regard as the 'freedom fighters', complete with sobbing girlies and star-struck prot£g£s. It's what they've always done.

And the same people who loathed Patriot Games with Harrison Ford busting a splinter group of the IRA will no doubt adore Hunger by Steve McQueen. But not because it's the truth. Or because it's even close.

It'll be because it presents the image they want to have presented.

And there's another name for that entirely. And it isn't 'art'.