MovieChat Forums > Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983 (2009) Discussion > Questions

Questions

posted 8 years ago by Arthur_Desmond
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1. Bob Craven and Tommy Douglas and possibly other cops were obviously instructed by Angus to murder (or cover up for the murder of) Ms Garland, as well as torture Dunford in order to condition him into a homicidal rage so that he'd get Dawson out of the way for them, hence protect the 100M investment in the commercial center. Angus says this in a flashback in episode 3. But why would Douglas and Craven stay in the Karachi Club that night? Did they not imagine that Dunford would enact his revenge that very same day, putting them in a hospital in the process? Angus and his masked raiders obviously foresaw this, since they were waiting outside the Club. I mean I can understand the WYC placing undercover "point men" to monitor Dunford's actions and allow the others in, but these two? I am surprised Dunford didn't put a third eye on their forehead as soon as he saw them.

Or did they think they'd be capable of holding him off? By the way, that would have meant preventing him from killing Dawson.

2. Why would the WYC wait till Dunford was gone, instead of neatly packing it up by killing him there and then minutes after he kills Dawson? The public, after all, knew Dunford was not responsible for all those deaths, and if masked raiders were the official explanation for such a carnage, they might just as well be responsible for Dunford's death too, thereby saving the WYC the deaths of some of their own men in a car collision.

3. Laws' and Dawson's activities came as a surprise to Jobson in 1974 but it is left open to speculation whether Molloy and Angus knew about them or not. There are several hints that they did. Which takes me to the question: why did Laws not end up like Dawson back in 1974? If he knew they knew, not doing anything against him immediately after Dawson's death (a very public event) would only strengthen his potential for blackmail.

4. (rhetorical) Is there any real life basis for these events, much in the same way the Ripper case is taken verbatim from the real one? It looks a lot like the Savile case, the similar case in the Netherlands and the Alcasser Girls conspiracy theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsLYCPniINk (sorry, no translation).

[–] 8 years ago

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[–] Arthur_Desmond 8 years ago

What you say (1,2,4) makes sense but 3. even an old-time cop with no academic knowledge on psychiatry knows that types such as Laws end up striking again. Malloy is portrayed as rather thick, but Angus is by far the smartest of the lot (to the point that he even figures out who tipped Dunford, as you correctly say) and he has to know that it's a matter of time before Laws reverts to his old habits.

What I'm trying to say is that if Mishkin was framed, given the fact that he was Polish (not a very beloved nationality in UK as we can see lately), mentally challenged and on the fringes of social marginality, the wisest path for the cops would have been killing Mishkin like they killed Leonard Cole years later, and engineering Laws' death like they engineered Dawson's death.

A mentally handicapped prisoner who hasn't lost the power of speech, and a serial killer liable to draw the wrong conclusions from the fact he got scot-free, are two liabilities on the long term IMO.