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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.”
