Fair to say? I'm trying not to put the expectations for this film at an insurmountable position but it looks good.
shareTo me it felt more like Bergerac trying to do twin peaks. I was disappointed. Didn't even bother with the third one.
share[deleted]
I haven't seen Zodiac.
But this Movie is not even playing the same game as The Wire.
Good grief, it's not that good.
Glitter on the mattress, glitter on the highway...
The best parts of Red Riding might get close to the worst parts of The Wire (some scenes from season 5 surely) but that might be being to kind to Red Riding.
There you have it!
I don't think it's really comparable to either.
Indeed Red Riding is sort of the anti-Wire and has much more in common, despite it's dark tone, with campy ludicrous takes on police work like Castle or Bad Boys. Red Riding is, while an atmospherically very absorbing series, one of the more farcical takes on police work to grace the silver screen. The cartoonish brutality of the cops is silly and ludicrous and the portrayal of someone like Bill Molloy as an all powerful machiavelli rather than a petty tyrant and beleagured civil servant is silly and somewhat hillarious. The scene in 1974 where they brutally torture a reporter over what seems to be several days in Abu Ghraib style brutality is so farcical it takes one right out of the moment. The motto of "This is the North, where we do what we want", while a rhetorically powerful catch phrase, is ultimately silly from the POV of a show like The Wire, where the kind of silly, self aggrandizing brutality that Douglas and Craven carry out would quickly get caught in the webs of beauracracy. Throughout the first installment I kept wondering where the politicians were? The Wire was very accurate in showing that even a powerful and politically astute police commander such as Burrel or Rawls is ultimately powerless against a politician like Royce or Carcetti. The Wire was very realistic in showing that police violence is VERY much dominated by politics and social station. Far from being cartoons like the Red Riding cops were what we see in The Wire is that cops can commit a reasonably large amount of violence against gang members and criminals with impunity (and to some extent against young poor black males from the projects. We see Prez Herc and Carver almost get in real trouble for destorying that kids eye.) OTOH "civilians" are almost totally immune from police brutality. Witness what happens when Herc, who, in the end, is operating on good faith from a tip by a previously 100% reliable informant, jacks up that minister. The Wire was actually very good in various places at showing the dichotomy between the war zone of "the hood" and the rest of the world. Like when Cutty takes the kids to the fancy restaurant as a reward and they're so intimidated they have to leave. Or when Snoop is buying the nail gun at Home Depot. (if anything The Wire showed a bit too much of a dichotomy since they ignored the vital vital role of middle class suburban drug users in the retail drug trade). The kind of silly cops presented in Red Riding where they're nothing but thugs rampaging blindly across the countryside and beating on anyone and everyone is ludicrous. The idea that you're going to TORTURE a REPORTER? No matter how pissed you are at him you're never going to beat on a civilian like Dunford, especially not one with access to media sources. Dunford could destroy all of their careers with one story. You'd NEVER harm him, no matter how big a *beep* he is and no matter how hard he's poking around. This is a man who can destroy all of them. And there's NOTHING that would incentivize a superior to protect someone like Craven or Douglas who are rampaging around torturing civilians for their own pleasure OR someone like Bill the Badger who ALLOWS them to do that. Look, for example, at how Burrell in The Wire, nearly destroyed Daniel's career simply for pissing him off. When someone ACTUALLY committed a crime (Bunny Daniels in his collusion to distribute narcotics) Burell DID destroy his career and cause a major financial hit to him by forcing him to retire at a much lower rank and pay grade. The idea that a violent SOB like Bill the Butcher would be running around still in office is ludicrous. There's a slightly realistic moment in the third film where the Priest mentions that he was with John Dawson and the police reel back in horror because they realize they're stepping on an important guy's toes. But it comes in the middle of a completely ludicrous scene where they're torturing a priest, a PRIEST, on spec. That's farcical. You'd never NEVER torture a priest because again he can destroy their careers. Even without a connection to an important man like Dawson he could really jam them up.
As another poster said there's almost no actual policework which goes on in Red Riding. The police are, instead, just portrayed as this random gang of thugs. Their entire investigative technique seems to be hearing a rumor that someone might have been involved in something, grabbing them and trying to beat a confession out of them.
There's an interesting contrast at the beginning of the second film where they show the actual footage from Yorkshire during the Ripper investigation. That footage shows ACTUAL police work, like cops combing crime scenes, and a police force where people are actually, you know, expected to catch criminals and are afraid for their jobs when they can't. And that footage shows an actual citizenry who are politically engaged and are PISSED OFF at the ineffectualness of the cops. Contrast this with the fictional Yorkshire presented in Red Riding and it's stunning. There's no real police work, there's no real politics, no sense that people actually exist as anything other than canvasses for brutality to be conducted upon.
"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."
Very well said "There is no sayid"! Couldn't have done it better myself. Anyway you're so right in pointing out the unintendedely farcical which ruins all the gloom Red Riding tries to convey. Red Riding is terribly unrealistic but really wants to portray brutal reality. Of course they would never have tortured Dunford Abu Ghraib-style and they could have done it in a science fiction-movie, in an absurd comedy or in a dreamlike movie - well anywhere but on a realistic level.
shareThanks. I had seen the second movie first, which I think is more realistic in its take up until the end.
I think one problem is that the creators assume that "corrupt" cops have no boundaries or morals. But that's not the case. Hell I was just listening to an NPR broadcast where they were talking to this guy who had been involved in crime in the Boston area and he described one of his associates as "a real scumbag" and he admitted that they were all scumbags and all doing drugs and stealing stuff to pay for their habits but he said he and his friends only ever stole from people who they considered "bad" people, people like them. They weren't robbing little old ladies and stuff. That's where he drew the line. And that's a drug addicted criminal. I think that the creators don't realize that corrupt cops have those lines too. I mean no one wants to think that they're a scumbag and so they'll often try and justify their behavior through twisted moral logic. So it's okay for the cops to beat on some corner boy in order to elicit a confession because he's a bad guy. But they're not going to beat on a middle class housewife.
An example of this in the Red Riding trilogy is the Gypsie encampment clearing. That I find totally believable because that kind of stuff goes on ALL THE TIME and that's a case of a despised minority being forced out to make way for something that is supposed to be good for the community But regular civilians? No.
Keep in mind too that a lot off what we feel we can get away with is determined by empathy. Do we see the people in question as being part of the same group as us. In the US in the 20th century you had a lot of problems because you often had overwhelmingly white police forces who were policing majority black cities or portions of cities. To bring this back to The Wire, in his book about the BPD Homicide unit, David Simon describes the BPD in the 1960s as being "the largest best armed gang in the city". This was because they were largely white and policing a city which was becoming blacker. LA was also notorious for police brutality in large part because you had a mostly white police force which was policing high crime neighborhoods that were mostly minority. In LA the problem was exacerbated by the fact that most off the officers didn't even LIVE in the city. They lived in nearby bedroom communities and went into the city to work. This heightened the sense amongg the police that they were an occupying army who had nothing really in common with the population which they policed and this made it more acceptable to them to commit violence.
But what we see in Red Riding is no real boundaries. These guys seem to burtalize poor outsiders like the gypsies but also local siingle mothers, middle class professionals, and clergymembers. It's ludicrous.
"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."
Generally the IMDB's boards are pretty dismal, but those two posts were really good. I would click the "like" button if there was one.
shareI think it is fair to say. It's better than Zodiac, IMO, which took far too long and focused on nothing. In a sense, this is the British Zodiac, and is far far better. I dont see the comparison to the Wire as easily, mostly because this is closer to film than a 5 year long tv show, but it shares certain elements.
All of you who say its not that good, though, you are completely wrong. It belongs among the best trilogies ever. The only one that really stands a chance at being better than it is the Godfather trilogy and even that has an awful 3rd chapter. This is brilliant all the way through.
Check out my review here: http://thefilmsmith.com/2011/01/27/red-riding-trilogy-a-panorama-of-th e-human-condition/
As people have mentioned, Red Riding fails because it's trying so hard to be gritty and brutal, but comes off as just laughably over-the-top. The Wire is a much better show, because it treats its characters as real people. I mean the cops in Red Riding are just absurd. I would say the first movie is the only one that has any artistic merit, and even that is pretty silly at times. The other two movies are okay, but by movie three it has become so convoluted.
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I make it a rule to check the IMDB page for a movie _after_ I've seen it, but in this case I wish I had read this thread instead of just the title.
The Wire was fantastic. Zodiac has a great atmosphere. This movie had poor sound (not to mention the thick dialects), a Jude Law clone, unnecessary sex scenes and otherwise poor editing, a muddled script, an atmosphere that desperately tried for dark, arty, and gritty but was simply depressing, and less. I had the other two lined up to watch, but I will now dispose of them.