Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983 (2009)

I wanted to but couldn't!

Fresh and Exciting

Blistering performances.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Vicious, disgusting, more than gory, just gross, and yet so true to "life" if this is life. It sure is Yorkshire, accent, desolation and misery (more than plain and simple poverty), cruelty, pollution, greed, vice, perversion, etc. spread all over. All evils in one pouch, one bag in West Yorkshire and the motto that "this is the north, where we do what we want," that's the great beauty of ugliness.It will take you three long episodes to reach the culprit and you won't be surprised at all when you finally come to him. In the meantime the police would have revealed itself the most odious, ferocious and mentally cannibalistic institution you can imagine. Asking a question for them is necessarily hurting, torturing and a few other things of the sort: breaking fingers, crushing burning cigarettes anywhere you can imagine, stripping the suspects naked, and the films do not show them naked (prudes!). There is not one single person in the police force that is able to do anything regular like find a culprit that is really guilty and bring that one to justice. One journalist is driven to craziness and some deadly justice enforcing spree, and yet you will know if he was right in his choice of targets at the end of the third film. Another young man, slightly spaced out will be convinced under duress by everyone, probably only in the police, that he killed the girl. And he will end his life in prison. With little chance to be retried since he signed a confession and pleaded guilty.And quite a few are questioned that way and yet the crimes are going on: kidnapped girls, then raped, and in many ways cut up and carved up and more or less endowed with wings and feathers. And all that in a society that is rotten to the core, that speculates on the death of as many people as possible with pollution and the exploitation of them as long as they live with projects that are as crazy as they are greedy of shopping malls with cinemas and all kinds of entertainments to empty the billfolds of the gullible submissive slaves of the public till they are empty and they can then commit suicide or die young of any kind of hazardous escaping tentative or industrial pollution. And for the girls and women prostitution and promiscuity are the main two udders of everyday suspended death. You can imagine what the other two are.And be sure that all the cadres of the police and the most respected people in this society, lay and clerical, are among the small circle of speculators and their only aim is to make money and thus to keep the surrounding society going because you cannot squeeze money out of marginal miserable derelict and impoverished proletariat. No matter what, they must have just a little bit more than their basic needs to be able to spend that little bit more in the traps of the entertaining plotters.Is it a great trilogy? I do not know but one thing is sure even if at the end the killer is finally put out of the way all the corrupted elite of this part of Yorkshire will not be in any way even questioned, not to speak of prosecuted. After all corruption is the basic human dimension: the survival instinct of the more corrupted declared the fitter, by all means, even selling their parents into slavery and feeding their own children to the industrial sharks of our certainly not post-modern society but definitely pre-modern jungle.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

...this series should have ended at the end of Red Riding - 1980 or have consumed the plot of 1983 into 1980. The only resolution I saw was the Reverend Haws - I will say the writer of 1980 made known the distorted morals of Rev. Haws as he assisted 'Elizabeth Hall' (Julia Ford) to have an abortion as well as hitting on her when he meets 'Peter Hunter' (Paddy Considine) for the 1st time.Not to say clergy haven't, justifiably, been 'outted' as monsters - they have and should always be - bluntly there was no 'just desserts' for any of the big police officials - This could have been done lightly but firmly for the finale - it wasn't - this was poorly concluded with a lot of loose loose ends.

And finally the loose ends are tied up in the last part of the acclaimed RED RIDING trilogy. This time around, a low-rent lawyer and a cop with a conscience combine forces to expose the child killer who has been eluding police from the very beginning.I'm a sucker for a happy ending and this film gives us one - well, sort of one. I found the story punchier and although events become even darker - and more shocking, if that's even possible - there is hope, finally, in the full-on powerhouse ending.What a coup in casting Mark Addy as the sympathetic lead (he's usually typecast as lovable rolly-polly types since THE FULL MONTY back in the day)! David Morrissey is given a chance to shine, too, putting memories of BASIC INSTINCT 2 into the distant past. The series definitely ends on a high and it's nice to have some closure after everything that happened.

The last part of the "Red Riding"-Trilogy (I'm assuming you have seen the other two at least), this concludes the story. The real main player here, was a side player in the previous ones (though he did have more to "say" than we might have guessed in those movies). The second guy who has a main role, is a solicitor. And while he is reluctant at first, he seems to get his head around to become more involved.But again as with the other characters throughout the series, there are no real likable characters at hand here. Someone called this an adult approach to the thriller genre. You have to figure out, how you feel about that, of course. You might find it dreadful. On the other hand, this is a great thriller. It just needs it's time to unfold. And all the loose points get together at last ... Though some might be disappointed at what we get served ... I personally still feel, that the first movie was the strongest.