The Red Riding Trilogy: 1974

Don't let the 1974 fool you, this year merely indicates the time period in which this British crime drama is set. The first film of a trilogy, 1974 sets up the desolate Yorkshire town which has again been struck with the grizzly and brutal murder of a young girl. This makes her merely an entry in string of disappearances over the previous decade. Despite atmosphere thick enough to ski upon, this movie fails to offer much compelling and is a tough slog not only due to its grimy nature but also its convoluted narrative.

What begin with an investigation into a young girls disappearance, gives way to a murder, then to police corruption and bureaucratic cover-ups. Dropped squarely in the center is amateur journalist Eddie Dunford (Andre Garfield) whose combination of determination and coyness take him down a dark road. I will not even delve into the plot more than I have, as not only is it too complex to adequately lay out, but I am still trying to sort it all out myself.

While the performances are uniformly good, the characters are thoroughly unlikeable. Even our protagonist Eddie has a smarmy quality to him that makes it difficult for a real connection to be achieved. This is so with much of Red Riding: 1974, we are kept at arms length; never able to engage with any of the players nor the grief and depression the town is experiencing. Such is amplified further by the engrained ugliness at every corner which inhibits any discernible depth; everyone has demons, everything is wrong and nobody is happy. Thus, the instances of violence are muted by the grimness by which it is surrounded.

If you are really hankering for a dark tragic crime film starring Andrew Garfield, check out Boy-A; a supremely better and more resonant film. The highlight of the film for me was seeing Sean Bean again. His presence in films is an iota of what it should be and he gives one of the films best performances. Not having yet seen the following two instalments of this series I can not say with confidence this film will not be elevated when viewed in context. At this point, what I can say with confidence is Red Riding: 1974 was not an enjoyable experience. Perhaps, then, it was a success in its own right.

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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.

This is the first part of a trilogy about a serial murderer that kidnaps, rapes and kills little girls. As a young and emotional rookie journalist does his own investigations concerning the most recent and third murder, local police officers, entrepreneurs and even his own boss try do everything to hide a mysterious secret surrounding the murders. No one is innocent in this circle of corruption, power and abuse.

The first part of this trilogy is a very atmospheric film noir. It is a slow paced investigation that takes place in a rainy, grey and desperate entourage and where the main character discovers the evil that men do. While the beginning of the movie is a little bit boring and doesn't explain enough the first murders of the possible serial killer, the film gets more profound, intense and even shocking towards the ending and you really get absorbed by a dark and destructive atmosphere during the last thirty minutes of this movie that makes you watch the follow-up immediately.

The story is complex and many characters are introduced in the frustrating beginning but towards the end of the movie, you get used to all those characters and are able to create connections between them and that helps you to understand and appreciate the movie more and more. The actors are doing a quite well and authentic job and not only because of the very particular accent and entourage. Andrew Garfield plays a solid role as a young, naive and emotional journalist that does many mistakes during his quest for the truth. Rebecca Hall is doing a great job and plays the role of a disturbed and mysterious femme fatale with a tragic destiny. Sean Benn does an incredible job by playing the role of a rich, cold and dangerous businessman.

The best part of the movie is its very brutal and yet twisted ending that is filmed in a very intense way. The director did a great overall job in this movie and created some very intense footages that add a lot to the atmosphere of the movie. The way he cuts the final scenes and also the dream or hallucination sequences is very eerie and special. Concerning the end of the movie, I would like to give you the advice to check out the three deleted scenes on the DVD that add a special something to the atmosphere of the movie and to its end. I don't understand why those scenes have been deleted because they are all very strong and not filler material.

I've mentioned a lot of positive points and you might ask yourself why I didn't give eight or even nine stars to the movie. That's because of the slow paced beginning, the cliché that everything and everybody is corrupted, evil and brutal and that some events during this movie are too predictable because of that. The movie is intense and absorbing but up to the last thirty minutes there isn't much tension. There is also especially one scene that I found strange, as the young journalist gives the life's work of his deceased partner and friend to a young police officer. This scene has simply a lack of logic in my opinion and doesn't fit with the behaviour of the journalist that did everything on his own without caring about laws or instructions and that had some very bad experiences with the police.

But all in all, this is a very absorbing and authentic film noir with an excellent ending that makes me look forward to watch the follow-up quickly. If you like this genre, this movie is a most-have and highlight for you and if you like ordinary movies about criminal investigations you may get disturbed by the dark and brutal ending of the movie that distinguishes this film from the ordinary ones. No matter in which category you fit, I would highly recommend you this film and encourage you to not give up during the overlong introduction because the second part of the movie is more than worth the wait.

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.

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.