I have watched many of the available documentaries about the Yorkshire Ripper case and have read two books on the subject. So I feel that I know quite a bit about the factual details. This film, though a dramatization of the events, is highly accurate and does not drift far from the known facts, something that I really appreciated, as sometimes film producers and script writers like to interject bits of their own in order to give a film a more artistic touch. You'll find precious little of that here and I was grateful for that.
This film focuses heavily on the role that Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield of the West Yorkshire Police played in finding and arresting Peter Sutcliffe, a serial killer responsible for 13 murders that spanned over a five year period. It portrays Oldfield as a man so deeply immersed in the case that his health was affected, likely leading to his death at age 61.
If you like to be submerged deep in the details of a massive police investigation, then there is much to please you in this film. I really appreciated how the film showed the multitude of methods that were used in order to try to identify and ultimately catch the killer. (At times, the massive volume of data accumulated threatened to derail the case, which demonstrated just how complex and difficult this crime was to solve).
There is a lot of gritty realism in this film, as we watch the inner workings of the police and that of the ordinary people who were victims of the killer.
The acting is top-notch and the settings are very realistic.
At three hours long, the film is definitely a long watch, but I actually found myself not wanting the movie to end.
