Red Riding at IFC

The three movies that make up Red Riding portray an ugly, brutal world, full of unspeakable horror and violence. Familiar as some of the archetypes were --- the nasty businessman who is accountable to no one, the journalist who can handle the truth, the straight cop who doesn't hesitate to point the finger at other cops --- we were riveted. We can't say we liked the movies in the sense of, say, liking ponies and cupcakes, but we're glad to have seen them, one after the other, recently at IFC.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" goes the famous formulation, the motivating question of the trilogy. Based on four novels by David Peace, the three movies each had different directors and used different types of film stock. Of the three, only the first works on its own as a complete movie; the other two would be unsatisfying out of context, in part because they rely so heavily on the plot of the first. The movies share characters, visual motifs (especially the four smokestacks of Fitzwiliam, a local town), music, and, most of all, a desire to portray northern England as a lawless world unto itself. "Here's to the North," guests toast at a wedding, "where we do what we want."

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