The Plot
Doing a little investigative reporting, Eddie suspects that the crime is related to two other girls who went missing in 1969 and 1972, all within a few miles of each other. When he presses further, however, he runs into obstacles, both hard heads and hard fists: from the West Yorkshire police force, his own colleagues and a shady local businessman named John Dawson (Sean Bean), who owns the land on which the body was found.
The people that Eddie can trust are few: primarily fellow reporter Barry (Anthony Flanagan) and Paula (Rebecca Hall), the mother of one of the missing girls. Paula seeks comfort in Eddie's pursuit of the truth, but having been raised in an environment of organized crime and police corruption, she's not without her entanglements. And the deeper Eddie falls in love with her, the deeper he becomes embroiled in a mystery that could cost him everything.
Grade: B
Andrew Garfield in 'Red Riding 1974'.
Photo: Phil Fisk © IFC1980: The Yorkshire Ripper (a real-life case) has embarked on a reign of terror that's left 13 women dead in four years. With the West Yorkshire police producing few leads, Assistant Chief Constable Paul Hunter (Paddy Considine) of the Manchester police is sent to look into the force's suspicious activities -- something he'd done years earlier in a case that led nowhere.
Paul is a seemingly upstanding family man who has his own dark secret: he's cheated on his wife with his colleague, Helen Marshall (Maxine Peake). Trying to put the affair behind him, Paul recruits Helen (based purely on merit) to help him on the case
After some investigation, Helen suspects that one of the victims wasn't killed by the Ripper, but rather by someone involved with the cops. Again and again, though, she and Paul are thwarted by the secretive police force, who don't take kindly to the outsiders looking to rat them out. The investigators learn just enough from ex-cops and their families to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but at what cost? The guilty parties aren't willing to let the truth come out without a fight.
Grade: B-
1983: A young girl named Hazel Atkins is missing, and comparisons to the Clare Kemplay case of 1974 arise. Seeing this as vindication, the mother of the mentally handicapped man framed in that case asks local lawyer John Piggott (Mark Addy) to help file an appeal for her son. The man proclaims his innocence to John but can give only a cryptic identification of the real killer: "the wolf." Feeling that the West Yorkshire police forced the man's previous confession, John delves further into the case and sees the same pattern repeating in the Hazel Atkins investigation: a seemingly innocent man is arrested and framed with sketchy evidence. But John's probe reveals more than he bargained for, triggering hazy memories of his past that make the case all the more personal.
Meanwhile, an unlikely hero emerges from within the corrupt West Yorkshire force. Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), a quiet, shadowy character embroiled in the corruption during the previous two films, investigates the Atkins case with a zeal spurred in part by his fondness for a local psychic who claims to see victims of the killer in the afterlife. Flashbacks fill the holes in the previous films' plots, as we begin to see Jobson in a new light: a reluctant yes-man who passively went along with the police corruption and cover-ups for prominent local individuals. Now, fed up with the criminal activities and his internal strife, he seeks to put an end to the killer's campaign. But what can one man do when so many before him have failed?
Grade: B-
The End Result
L-R: Paddy Considine and Tony Pitts in 'Red Riding 1980'.
Photo: Phil Fisk © IFCThough it carries the stigma of a TV movie, the British trilogy rivals the acclaimed Zodiac in quality, with production value comparable to an HBO or other premium movie channel release. Each entry is helmed with the steady hands of a director with artsy indie drama cred: Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane, Kinky Boots), James Marsh (Man on Wire) and Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, Shopgirl). As such, the content tends more toward realistic crime drama than the grisly, exploitive elements of popular serial killer flicks like Seven. The stellar cast, which features a blend of hot up-and-comers (Garfield, Hall) and seasoned character actors (Bean, Considine, Addy), further captures the grim realism of the story.
