Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974

The Red Riding films have been sitting recorded waiting for me to watch them for quite some time. I set the recorder at the time for them because of the praise they received and the number of well-known names in there, other than this I didn't know too much and didn't know the books they are based off. The plot sees a young journalist returning to northern England and picking up a story about a murdered girl who was found with swan wings sewn onto her back. The police seem to be content with the usual suspects but when he starts digging deeper he finds a world of police corruption and cronyisms, putting him in danger.

When I watched this film I tried to put the hype and critical acclaim out of my mind and just come to it as I found it. As such I was not overly impressed by it but did enjoy it for the grimness that it does well. The film does have an engaging sense of foreboding and toughness that suits the material and it delivers this aspect of it very well in terms of tone, locations, costumes and general feel. However, this is ultimately a story, not just atmosphere, and I was surprised that the film didn't deliver on this particularly well. I've never read the books but I do presume they are longer than this 90 minute film represents and I presume this because it seems like a lot is rammed in here and nothing really has much time to develop or grow before we're onto the next thing. This reduced the impact of the story for me because it did feel like I was being rushed through it rather than being allowed to move around within it. It isn't helped by it more or less going where you think it will go almost by virtue of how quickly it hands you everything, thus focusing on mind on certain characters and scenarios rather than allowing the bigger world to be a thing.

The cast do well even though so many of them seem to have a few minutes each. Garfield is solid in the lead even if he seems to spent a lot of the time just being beaten. Hall works well next to him but outside of these two the cast seem too deep in faces and not deep enough in screen time for them. So people like Marsan, Mercer, Bean, Mullan etc really don't feel like they are well used even if they are good in their moments. Everyone has a good accent but it is worth saying that to those not familiar with it, it may be difficult to always pick up what is being said – this is not just down to the thickness of the accents but the sound engineering here has lots of background noise and, for the sake of atmosphere I guess, seems to have lots of mumbling.

This first film has enough good about it for me to check out the second in the trilogy, but I hope it does better with the actual story telling part. In this case atmosphere and time/place was very well done but the story and characters felt rushed and the impact of the tale was lessened due to this, which is a shame.

It is 1974. Our protagonist, young and hip, has shaggy hair, sideburns, and a slick leather jacket. Asked about his suit at his father's funeral: "Carnaby's," he admits. "Oh, ay," says one mourner, with a hint of added dismay.

He's been in the South, you see. American viewers with a limited perception of the UK may, at the beginning of Channel Four's remarkable Red Riding trilogy, have little understanding of what difference that makes. They will soon learn. "This is the North," says one of the terrifying policemen who populate this film's haunted Yorkshire. "Where we do what we want."

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 begins under lowering skies. A girl of ten has vanished. A young and callow crime reporter Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) gets clued in by a conspiracy-minded colleague that the vanishing resembles two previous cases within a close range. Eager to make his mark, he senses opportunity, and in excitement at the idea that a serial murderer might be at work he blurts, "Let's keep our fingers crossed."

As the story deepens, however, so does the character. The grief of the victims' families needles him; he begins a relationship with one girl's heartsick mother (Rebecca Hall). Picking apart the story that emerges, he is drawn into the orbit of a wealthy developer (Sean Bean) with an unwholesome degree of influence in Yorkshire and its power structure. The perpetrator of the crimes is unquestionably psychopathic -- he stitches "angels' wings" into his victims' backs. Yet, in the film's most disturbing element, the police department itself functions as a psychopath, achieving its desires through brutalization, torture, and even possibly murder.

Caught in a conscienceless land, Dunford's own conscience, in reaction, grows, and what began as mere ambition transforms into a perhaps doomed lust for the truth. If this sounds like a conventional trope of the genre, it is -- plotwise much of what happens here is conventional. But Red Riding makes the narrative fresh by treating it not just as a story of crime and justice but as one of the soul, and its environs. When Dunford begs the mother to escape with him from the prevailing madness, he tells her, "In the South the sun shines." What he's telling her is that the sickness is inseparable from the place. Yorkshire is filmed (with gorgeous gloom) as a cloud-shrouded ruin, an economic disaster site in which financial power trumps morality. Starting out fresh-faced, vain, and cocky, Dunford will, by the end of his journey, be considerably the worse for wear. Looking at the landscape around him, we think, how could he not be?

Red Riding 1974 is not flawless -- some scenes feel repetitive and the bleakness can be overwhelming. But it compels you forward, it stays with you, and it genuinely rattles the spirit. This is not easy viewing, but in approaching the continuing saga, it promises hard- earned reward.

I didn't pick this film up expecting a laugh-riot but having heard a lot about the bungled Yorkshire Ripper investigation, I fully expected an intelligent and insightful work from "1974". Yet coming away from this movie I feel even more confused than I did before I began. There was too little background about the case, the era and the characters given, as if the directors assumed that their audience had read the book and/or were living in Yorkshire during the 70s. Sadly, neither is true in my case and if the makers wouldn't have assumed as much they could have added a lot of meat to this story while keeping a broad range of viewers interested. The star-crossed lovers subplot (or was it the main plot??) was irritatingly predictable, so much so that I was shouting at the screen for the last half of the movie, to the chagrin of my neighbours. And most of the characters came across as shallow and seemed to drift through the film in a timeless, listless haze of futility.

Having said that one of the big pros was watching Sean Bean, who was very easy on the eyes and acting his heart out. "1974" is also very sleek, although the beautifully-shot landscape is so depressing that you sometimes wonder why they made the effort.

In conclusion, I will watch next movie in the hopes that it will shed more light on the Yorkshire Ripper case but I have to admit this was not a great start.

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.

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