Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983

And finally the loose ends are tied up in the last part of the acclaimed RED RIDING trilogy. This time around, a low-rent lawyer and a cop with a conscience combine forces to expose the child killer who has been eluding police from the very beginning.

I'm a sucker for a happy ending and this film gives us one - well, sort of one. I found the story punchier and although events become even darker - and more shocking, if that's even possible - there is hope, finally, in the full-on powerhouse ending.

What a coup in casting Mark Addy as the sympathetic lead (he's usually typecast as lovable rolly-polly types since THE FULL MONTY back in the day)! David Morrissey is given a chance to shine, too, putting memories of BASIC INSTINCT 2 into the distant past. The series definitely ends on a high and it's nice to have some closure after everything that happened.

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 seemingly untouchable, corrupt West Yorkshire police, and the true evil mastermind behind the child abductions and murders of the last 14 years, can't resist doing it again. "Red Riding: 1983" sets the story that another young girl has vanished from the same area, nine years earlier. "Red Riding: 1983" cycles back to the terrible events set in motion in "Red Riding: 1974", when a series of young girls went missing and a mentally retarded man, Michael Myshkin (Mays), was wrongfully convicted for the crime. Detective Inspector Maurice Jobson (Morrissey), a regular if mostly background character in the first two films, becomes our first focal point here as a man deeply wrecked by his complicity in the Yorkshire Constabulary's general lawlessness.

In 1983, another young girl disappears, and Jobson decides to do some actual police work--and reopening several old cases his colleagues would prefer to keep closed--and sniffing around the likes of series constant Rev. Lawes (Mullan, with the omniscience and eerie stillness of a very dark angel). Simultaneously, in the trilogy's first dual narrative, another lead emerges in the form of John Piggott (Addy), a sad-sack solicitor and Yorkshire native who reluctantly agrees to file an appeal on behalf of Myshkin. Piggott marks the trilogy's most uncomplicated hero.

It may come as a surprise that the ending of "Red Riding: 1983" adds a dose of hope to its brackish main course. "Red Riding: 1983" provides a fitting conclusion to a whole that is, in some ways, greater than the sum of its parts." Red Riding" is an effective crime thriller, but it's an even more striking drama about the dark parts of the human soul and man's capacity for inhumanity. The third movie represents the middle ground between the promising-but-uneven" Red Riding: 1974" and its sequel, the shocking and haunting "Red Riding:1980." This time around, there's less in the way of a stand- alone narrative as screenwriter Tony Grisoni, working from the novel by David Peace, stitches closed various plot holes. The finale doesn't answer all of our question, but it provides a sense of closure and clears up a number of nagging questions left over from the previous two segments.

What we can take away from all of this is not just an investigation into a series of child murders. This is an in-depth character study of three (or four) main protagonists--as they slowly unfold a ring of corruption surrounding an era of a very specific locale of the UK. As things get "hairy" within each of our main characters' worlds, rather than dig deeper into the case, they instead spend three quarters of the running time of each film digging deeper into their own psych--and begin to like what they see in themselves less and less.

The Red Riding trilogy is not something one would normally watch for comedy style entertainment. The underworld criminal corruption and fascist bastard Yorkshire police encountered so far in the first two parts are just touching the surface of this crime drama; beneath this is sick, violent and twisted evil. And the final episode lays it bare.

I have to say the performance by the cast is extraordinary. Sure, you can say that actors like Sean Bean and Paddy Considine do possess a degree of cool and that they easily endow upon their character roles. However, in the final part, something happens which really surprised me and gave me the creeps.

The setting for this trilogy: 1970-1980's Britain, has touched a nostalgic nerve in me - a 40 year old Brit. However, my memories of Gypsies, vandalised cars on the street and the grassy wilderness that carries on from the back garden are all fond memories of my childhood. Red Riding brought me back into these days and these places, and introduced a host of beastly horrors and brutal realities of which - until now - I was blithely unaware.

Finally, I guess that in conclusion, I was specially targeted by this. But it may just be well-written, expertly researched, quintessentially British, supported by a great cast and neatly photographed. And the impact that was intended for the end - certainly worked on me.

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.