Red Riding: 1983 Reviews

Mostly a very strong end to an epic swim through dirty waters, 1983 doesn’t quite pack the emotional punch it needed to be ultimately satisfying. This time the narrative is fractured between two, sometimes even three, different perspectives and this indecisive quality about which character is our narrator stands in stark contrast to the first two which focused in with laser precision on one character’s point-of-view of the madness going on around them. But at least this one offers up a payoff to questions that we’ve had since the first installment.

Primarily, 1983 focuses in on David Morrissey’s bad cop having a moral crisis and beginning to break down. He has the dirt on who has been doing what and knows how to go about unearthing the truth and bringing the cycle of madness to an end. The other story, which isn’t given much time to really develop or become a very strong one, features a lawyer (Mark Addy) with ties to the police force uncovering the child abduction ring from the first film and frantically trying to rescue the latest victim. The third story, which dovetails into the two, highlights the reoccurring characters of a corrupt pastor (Peter Mullan) and a gay prostitute (Robert Sheehan). Does it sound convulted enough for you? Well, what emerges isn’t necessarily important to understand all of the crossed T’s and dotted I’s. It’s the portrait of a particular place undergoing a great deal of growth and change within a decade.

Also a major problem – the ending is a bit too upbeat to be entirely believable for this world. Redemption and a moment of grace for these three characters has been absolutely earned, especially poor Sheehan’s BJ. But it feels false, and while this particular crime ring has been shuttered, Morrissey’s cop will still have to face blowback from his job and former co-conspirators. The extensive use of voiceover and the employment of a medium are other egregious errors which make this installment a comedown from the previous two. Doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s still a solidly made and incredibly entertaining movie and generally works as a nice capper to the trilogy.

Red Riding ends up being as effective and epic an exploration of a specific time and place and the overwhelming crime and corruption that are building (or destroying) it into something totally different as, say, Chinatown or L.A. Confidential (but not quite reaching such lofty artistic heights as either). But when the dust settles and we stand back and look at it all, when we’ve finished processing the banality of cruelty and debauchery in this place, the thing that lingers the most in the mind is a phrase: “This is the north, where we do what we want.”

Within 2 days, I watched this whole trilogy and I thought it was a really rewarding watch. This time, this last installment had the very difficult task of wrapping all the murky stuff developed in the previous installments. Personally, I thought that this last feature was the least focused one. Indeed, instead of one main character, they had this time two and since the running time was again rather short, I really wonder if it was a wise choice to have two storylines. Furthermore, one of those two men was one of those despicable West Yorkshire police officers and even though it was indeed a bold move, it was also really difficult to root for the guy or to care about what he was going through. The other storyline was about some looser lawyer who keeps wondering if he should get involved with the whole thing or not but there was not much time to develop this character in my opinion. Once again, for the 3rd time around, there was again a really underdeveloped and underwhelming romance, just like in the other installments, but this time around, it was involving a psychic which made it even more disputable. Still, what a strong conclusion for a really intriguing trilogy! As a whole, it works even better than if you take all the movies as stand-alones. Indeed, the 3 really different directors managed to create a dark and fascinating world with one of the vilest police forces you’ll ever encounter. To conclude, even though this last installment was not really flawless, I really enjoyed this trilogy and I highly recommend it, especially if you like the genre.