Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974

I must have missed something while watching "Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974" because I did not see a spectacular film as some tend to say about it. What I saw was a well made film but nothing so outstanding about a journalist trying to stop a serial killer who murdered little girls back in 1974.

Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) is a persistent yet very naive journalist trying to solve the case behind the disappearance of some girls from the surroundings. The more he goes with the story he'll find more and more trouble, to the point of having a strange tendency of getting punched by corrupt cops who don't want him near of the people who might know what's the truth behind the deaths. Haven't we seen that before?

The film wasn't strong enough to make me feel deeply interested at certain parts (the course of Eddie's investigations are quite boring, so in order to lift things higher the director gives us lots of sex scenes, a little bit pointless but interesting to see, specially because Garfield is in all of that). It's very well made, well acted specially by Garfield and Sean Bean, who plays a powerful businessman. The historical reconstruction, art direction and costumes (the corny pants Andrew wears are priceless) are really good. But I'm a little saturated of plots like that, very surpriseless and very obvious.

So, I made my point of what works in this piece. If you think you should see it go forward. It's up to you. Totally recommendable for fans of Garfield, Bean, Eddie Marsan, Peter Mullan, David Morrissey and others. 6/10

I'll start by saying that I was expecting to like this before I watched it. Whether that had a bearing on my judgement, I can't really say.

'Nineteen Seventy-Four' has shades of 'Taxi Driver', the narrative framed not by the steam that rises from the streets of New York City but instead by the skies of Yorkshire. The comparison between the two movies really occurred to me most strongly at the end of the film and I think you'll see why.

The acting is spot on from everybody. I can't think of one performance that stands out for the wrong reasons. Andrew Garfield is excellent in the lead role and Sean Bean is on form.

The exploration of police corruption and the struggle for both revenge and justice resonate well beyond the ending of the film.

The cinematography is excellent and it is disappointing that films of this quality have to be shown on television because they won't find enough of an audience in the majority of British cinemas.

A binge watching of RED RIDING TRILOGY, three TV movies adapted from David Peace's RED RIDING QUARTET, where its second chapter 1977 is skipped. Directed by three different directors in three different formats: 1974 by Julian Jarrold in 16mm film, 1980 by James Marsh in 35mm film and 1983 by Anand Tucked with Red One digital camera, the trilogy forebodingly trawls into the organized crimes and police corruption in West Yorkshire through the prisms of three different protagonists while they are wrestling with a series of murder cases, and overall, it inspires to achieve a vérité similitude of the bleak milieu while sometimes being mired with its own navel- gazing, such as narrative banality (1974), over-calculated formality (1980) and poorly indicated flashback sequences (1983).

In 1974, the bright-young-thing Eddie Dunford (Garfield) is an ambitious crime reporter for The Yorkshire Post, who takes it on himself to probe three similar cases of missing or murdered teenage girls, which puts his own life on the line. He hits every nook and cranny of procedural clichés, from losing a dear colleague Barry Gannon (Flanagan). who knows too much of the dirty business (after being inauspiciously warned about his own safety) nevertheless withholds crucial information from Eddie, to the police's porous covering-up of the culprit with a scapegoat Michael Myshkin (Mays), until Eddie meets Paul Garland (Hall), who channels a shopworn ambiguity between a grieved damsel-in-distress and an inscrutable gangster's moll, whom he incurably falls in love with. Finally his path comes across with John Dawson (Bean), a local real estate magnate, and after succumbs to an excruciating reality check signed by both Dawson and police force, Eddie despondently realizes he cannot save nobody, a final vigilante bloodbath is his last gamble to right the wrong in the only option he is left with (again, manipulated). The movie is shot in subdued retro-sheen, Garfield fleshes out Eddie's fix with absorbing commitment, and Hall is magnificent to behold in her blond charisma.

The acting superb, the setting haunting and the tale of corruption well told. But damn this movie was depressing. Hats off to Andrew Garfield who puts on a bafta level performance while Ensuring tortures await him. I recommend but watch it with somebody so you don't get haunted and sorrowful alone.

The "Red Riding Trilogy" (based on the novels by David Peace), originally screened on British TV last year. The three films clock in at just short of five hours. I found out about this trilogy of films after reading a review in The New Yorker magazine, though I can't remember whether it was David Denby or Anthony Lane who wrote about "Red Riding Trilogy", but whoever it was, gave the films a very favourable review. So good, that I wanted to see the films for myself because it's not often that either David Denby or Anthony Lane who gave this film such fulsome praise. The first film in the trilogy deals with a series of child murders and one journalist's attempts to find out who is responsible for these atrocities. The second film is set against the backdrop of the efforts of the police to catch the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, while the final film revisits what happened in the first film. Woven into this apparently simple plot-line, is a back-story about corruption in the West Yorkshire police, and its ties to organized crime. Each film is labyrinthine in their complexities, and you have to pay close attention, otherwise what is revealed in the first film, won't make much sense in the second and third films. The acting is first class, though the direction in the second film is pedestrian compared to the other two films. My only gripe is the sound quality especially in the first film, as if the actors are talking with mouths stuffed with cotton wool. Otherwise, the "Red Riding Trilogy" is a gem, and deserves a viewing.