Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983

The last part of the "Red Riding"-Trilogy (I'm assuming you have seen the other two at least), this concludes the story. The real main player here, was a side player in the previous ones (though he did have more to "say" than we might have guessed in those movies). The second guy who has a main role, is a solicitor. And while he is reluctant at first, he seems to get his head around to become more involved.

But again as with the other characters throughout the series, there are no real likable characters at hand here. Someone called this an adult approach to the thriller genre. You have to figure out, how you feel about that, of course. You might find it dreadful. On the other hand, this is a great thriller. It just needs it's time to unfold. And all the loose points get together at last ... Though some might be disappointed at what we get served ... I personally still feel, that the first movie was the strongest.

In flashbacks, Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), Bill Molloy, Bob Craven, Harold Angus, Dick Alderman, Jim Prentice, and others from the police are taking control of the vice trade in the north. They invest in the shopping mall being built by John Dawson (Sean Bean). It's 1983. Ten year old Hazel Atkins goes missing and Jobson wonders if they got the right man Michael Myshkin for the earlier dead girls. He is directed to medium Mandy Wymer (Saskia Reeves) who claims that there is a Wolf, a Rat, and a Pig. The Swan is dead and under the beautiful carpets. John Piggott (Mark Addy) is a local boy turned defense lawyer. He's asked to appeal Myshkin's conviction. His father was known as Arthur the Pig. Jobson known as the Owl arrests Myshkin's friend Leonard Cole. Piggott tries to sign him up as his lawyer but he is found hung in jail. Meanwhile, BJ is released from prison and Martin Laws is the local reverend.

This third installment returns the story back to the kidnapped girls. It is sorely needed after taking a side trip in the second installment. I can do without the medium. Her revelations could easily be given to Myshkin. It is a nice wrap up although this is something that needs to be binged. A lot of the first movie needs to be remembered to fully appreciate this movie. David Morrissey and Mark Addy deliver emotionally conflicted characters. The final reveal could be more twisty. It is mostly about waiting to find the various animals.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

It's 1983, and another young girl has gone missing from the same school and the same area as a girl who was found dead with angel wings nearly ten years earlier. This throws the past and the present together in spectacular fashion, as the family of Michael Mishkin (Daniel Mays), the impaired man accused of the murder all those years ago, ask troubled lawyer John Piggott (Mark Addy) to take his case and help him mount an appeal. The trouble is, Mays confessed and this is hard to appeal against. Instead, Piggott puts pressure on the local police to look into claims of police brutality and corruption in getting Mays's confession. But remorseful Detective Jobson (David Morrison) remembers his partner's unorthodox approach from years ago and tries to put things right, leading to a devastating conclusion that will shatter everything.

Red Riding has been a thinly rewarding show to get involved in. Maybe it's something you need to watch a few times to really pick everything up, but while it's pleased with itself as an intelligent and original drama, it comes off just as much as a confusing and muddled story that might have tried to be a little too clever for it's own good. This final part supposedly wraps everything up, but hardly in a neat and tidy fashion.

The concluding part of the whole shebang comes together like a nice looking car where all the components fall apart once you switch on the engine. While the most important parts seem to have been wrapped up smoothly, there still feels like a lot of subplots that haven't been taken care of or that maybe there was too much to take in anyway and by the end it's all blown your mind a bit. Atmospherically, the show's excelled but while the story keeps you glued to the end, it all ends up feeling like a bit too much style over substance and that's stopped it from being a brilliant series and instead an average one. ***

(The following review is a follow-up on the reviews written for Julian Jarrold's "Red Riding: 1974" and James Marsh's "Red Riding: 1980"; for further info on the Red Riding trilogy and content related to the series' continuity, read the other reviews before this one.) The excellent Red Riding trilogy has finally come to a close...and it went out with quite a bang! Anand Tucker helms the final film, "Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983" and does a pitch-perfect job of joining the two previous films, solving up most of the enigmas that had been ignored, and closing the circle. Tucker is a master at his characters' catharses and at carefully observing and commenting on the infinitely heartbreaking human characteristics of revenge, redemption and atonement. Tucker concludes Jarrold and Marsh's films in this way: he extracts Jarrold's poignancy from "1974" and Marsh's intelligence from "1980", mixes them and adds his own masterful touch while tying the loose ends of each film's plots. The result is, as I've said before, an excellent closure to this harrowing series and a very satisfying finale.

The film returns to 1974, and the opening scene shows us the corrupt and darkly evil group of villains we've already come to know assembled in a country estate, including Harold Angus (Jim Carter), the seedy police superintendent, and Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), the mysteriously cryptic and detached crime investigator. The child murders we saw in the first film are only just being discovered by the police, and their shady dealings with John Dawson (Sean Bean) are beginning to be discussed. Then the film shifts us to the year 1983, where attorney John Piggott (Mark Addy) is being commissioned to appeal for the killer of the three girls, whom his family believes to be innocent (and secretly, so do we).

The film dangerously shifts between 1974 and 1983 without letting the viewer know. At first we're confused to see so many characters who're supposed to be dead already involved in present-time events, but as the film goes along it is all explained. Tucker is interested not in the chronology of events or making sense out of the twisted plot...after all, what sense can ever be extracted from such base crime and corruption? We eventually manage to sort the plot out, and by then we just KNOW that no matter whether the events make sense or not, the depravity and evil behind it all can never explain itself to our consciences. Tucker digs deeper into the Yorkshire murders than Jarrold and Marsh could because he can play with all of the characters from the previous two films, giving us everybody's side of the story, everyone's point of view and every person's true face (as opposed to the mask they've been painting all along). And the new character (Piggott, the attorney) who we've only come to know is such an ambiguous, flawed and relatable character that (even through his weak points) he becomes the most human character of the film. Piggott leads the investigation taking place in 1983 and Maurice Jobson leads a covert investigation back in 1974 parallel to Eddy Dunford's (but obviously laden with a corrupt agenda).

Once again, the film builds a steady tension that reaches unbearable heights as each minute passes on, as as the answers to all the questions we had are revealed to us, we can't help but lift our hands to our mouths and stare open-eyed at the horror behind the truth. The first two films dealt with one person trying to expose the guilty murderers and crime lords; this film is about the murderers and members of the Force seeing how they can cover up their footprints, how they can redeem themselves from tainted consciences, and how they can go on living while internal disagreements arise. And Anand Tucker, who has shown us with films like "Hilary and Jackie" and "Shopgirl" that he's a master at exploiting guilt and internal conflict, makes the most of his characters and blows them up from the inside out.

I can't say anything about the ending without spoiling everything for you, but I WILL say that the series couldn't have ended better. I saw these films on DVD, in the comfort of my bedroom, and as soon as "1983" was over I felt like jumping to my feet and clapping my heart out. I'll never tire of repeating this: I am amazed! Overwhelmed, really.

I've recently heard that Ridley Scott's been taken into consideration to direct an American film which joins this trilogy into one full-length feature. That is just ridiculous. These three films put together amount to over FOUR hours and a half, and not a minute is wasted in any of them. Trying to summarizing this will take out the POINT of it all, and is sure to be a flop (after all, there's a reason why the British made this into a trilogy). I seriously recommend you see this before the USA releases its own reduced version. This is as good as trilogies are ever gonna get. Rating: 3 stars and a half out of 4!

In two words, brutal and disturbing. But also complex, adult, respecting the viewer who wants more than a linear tale with loose ends all strung up very neatly; its a close-up of a society in decay, of a police force that fails to have a moral compass, of some dark perversions lurking where one least expects to find them. The performances are uniformly excellent, and each of the tales, separated by a few years, showcase a specific individual into whose motivations and feelings we are allowed access: a journalist, a federal investigator, a local policeman. Be warned that there are graphic scenes of torture, that often a clue dropped in Part 1 is not picked up until Part 3, that character motivations, like those of our own, are not always crystal clear. There are 300 minutes of intensity, filmed with immediacy if not always clarity, and worth an immersion for the willing viewer.