A young Welsh soldier on duty in Northern Ireland finds himself used as a political pawn, following a tragic incident during a violent clash with some of the local agitators. The Guardian proposed that "if Spielberg's ET, in the immortal words of Pauline Kael, was a bliss out, Karl Francis' 'Boy Soldier' is a bleed out for sheer fist shaking emotionalism, it would be hard to find another British film of recent years to beat it.".