Movie review: Red Riding trilogy (1974, 1980, 1983)

Brutal police tactics and rampant corruption overshadow serial killings in this dramatic trio de force.

One can but hope that Red Riding: 1974 and its two companion films (RR 1980 and RR 1983) will quickly run their course in cinemas. Not, mind you, because they're lacking in entertainment value or enthralling character development (and thence dismantlement) -- quite the contrary, in fact.

The reason I'd like to see them tarry only briefly in theaters is so that distributors might get on with releasing them on DVD* or on demand digital, thereby making them more accessible to film consumers.

Because -- let's face it -- how many filmgoers will be willing (or even able) to attend three separate screenings in order to take in the entire trio of films? Even on the basis of a plethora of positive reviews? (Of which this will be another.)

As mentioned in this week's news and notes, I suggest dropping everything to have a look at 1974, and then let the remainder of the chips (and the movie tickets) fall where they may. If you're as impressed by the first film in the series (directed by Brideshead Revisited's Julian Jarrold) as I was, then there'll be no stopping you from queuing up for the other two installments.

Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield -- Anton from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) is an ambitious and somewhat naive newspaper reporter who stumbles upon what he takes to be a pattern linking several incidences of child abduction. (And murder.) In other words, Dunford thinks Yorkshire may be home to a serial killer.

Convincing his editor to give him the assignment, Dunford pulls up stakes for the West Yorkshire town of Morley, where the body of the killer's latest victim has turned up in a construction site. A pair of swan's wings has been stitched onto her back. Prior to this, the ten-year-old girl has been "tortured, raped, and strangled -- in that order," as fellow reporter Jack Whitehead (Eddie Marsan -- Lestrade from Sherlock Holmes) puts it to Dunford.

Dunford begins by interviewing parents of the victims, which doesn't go all that well -- until he makes the acquaintance of a grieving ex-mom named Paula Garland (Rebecca Hall -- Vicky of Vicky Cristina Barcelona). After being forcefully ejected from her premises on their first meeting, Dunford later finds himself invited into Paula's bedroom (and etc.) following an evening's chance encounter at a pub. The widow Garland needs consoling, and Eddie's just the man for it. Or so he imagines.

In the course of his investigations, Dunford runs afoul of the local constabulary, which proves to be foul indeed. These West Yorkshire gents have elevated police brutality to a fine art, which Eddie discovers when he delves too deeply into the suspicious death of his fellow reporter pal Barry (Anthony Flanagan). Barry meets his grisly end in a bizarre roadway accident, whereby a plate of tradesman's glass has served as a guillotine. Perhaps -- think local police -- Dunford might be dissuaded from pursuing further inquiries if his fingers are smashed in a car door.

Wrong.

If you can penetrate the heavy accents and bear a period of disorientation as this complex tale begins to unfold, Red Riding will reward you with one of the most deeply satisfying (and starkly violent) conclusions in cinematic history.

(Which is not, by any means, to suggest that the ending will be a happy one.)

Sean Bean (of the Sharpe's series and Lord of the Rings) plays a key role as John Dawson, a bigoted land developer with major economic interests in the region. Dawson's mentally-disturbed wife (Cathryn Bradshaw) resides in a sanitarium, leaving him free to spend his evenings at the gentlemen's club he owns, in the company of his Soprano-like associates.

There's enough impressionist style on display to encourage further viewings -- another argument for bringing on that DVD release. Jarrold and his director of photography (Rob Hardy) indulge in dream sequences, character revelations through frosted glass, slippages in the time stream, and gratuitous resort to repeated angular tableaux. The 102-minute drama introduces themes of obsession and compulsion that will be repeated in succeeding episodes.

Red Riding: 1980 (directed by James Marsh, whose Man on Wire won the Best Documentary Oscar) plays like something of a narrative interlude between 1974 and 1983, with the criminal focus shifting to a killer of prostitutes instead of children.

Our lead character here is investigator Pete Hunter (Paddy Considine), who is given Home Office carte blanche to dig into the repeated killings. He selects two trusted associates to accompany him to Yorkshire (which by this time we're beginning to think of as Indian Country): John Nolan (Tony Pitts) and Helen Marshall (Maxine Peake).

Hunter's investigation runs into two roadblocks from the start: 1) a disagreeable and obfuscatory chap named Bob Craven (Sean Harris) is appointed as their Yorkshire Police liaison; and 2) it develops that Hunter and Marshall have had an illicit affair, which naturally complicates their professional relationship and threatens to bestow a series of sleepless nights on them both.

Serving as a plot connector to the previous episode is the fact that Hunter led the investigation into the shooting at John Dawson's nightclub, where events chronicled in 1974 came to a head.

As in 1974, obsession appears as a theme, and fatalism as another. But the most noticeable undercurrent here involves an understanding that no investigation can escape the personal shadings cast upon it by its investigator. It's the observer effect translated to a police procedural.

"How deep does the rot go?", Hunter asks a corrupt police official near the film's end.

He's about to find out.

Red Riding: 1983 returns to the child abduction storyline of the first film, with our point of narrative focus shifting to one of the Yorkshire police force conspirators. Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey, Is Anybody There?) is remorseful, and is threatening to become contrite, and it's all because of a psychic.

Mandy Wymer (Saskia Reeves) has been trying to get the attention of the Yorkshire police for years, and -- thanks to increasing public pressure to bring an end to the ongoing series of crimes -- she now has it.

Wymer thinks the latest missing girl may still be alive. She seems able to see into the soul of Jobson, and finds it scorched, but not completely blasted. She offers him comfort and human tenderness. It's a saving grace.

Acting independently, Jobson and a lawyer named Piggot (Mark Addy) find themselves reopening an investigation that officialdom had declared closed. Will they discover the murderer's true identity in time to save his latest victim -- and redeem their own lives in the process?

*O.K., they're already available as UK imports, but to see them you'd have to have a PAL-compatible DVD player.