Category Archives: Crime

Paths of Glory (1957)

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2009 #85
Stanley Kubrick | 87 mins | TV (HD) | PG

Paths of Glory“The paths of glory lead but to the grave,” wrote Thomas Gray, and Stanley Kubrick — adapting from the novel by Humphrey Cobb — sets about proving him right.

Kubrick’s depiction of war is excellent, from long tracking shots through the trenches, to the nighttime wilderness of No Man’s Land, lit only by flares that reveal it’s strewn with bodies, to an epic and perfectly-staged battle that is a visual and aural assault. Indeed, Winston Churchill claimed that the film was a highly accurate depiction of trench warfare and the sometimes misguided workings of the military mind, and it’s so effective that it was banned in France for its negative depiction of the military. I’m sure the story could have been equally well applied to any military in the habit of killing its own men, but hey, it’s always fun to pick on the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Even beyond the battle scenes the film remains bleakly realistic: the depressing Old Boys’ Club-style hierarchy of the military (still all too much in effect, as series like Generation Kill reveal); the unjust unrecorded trial (an excellent courtroom sequence that can stand up to any other); through to the inescapable finale. George Macready’s villain is as chillingly evil as they come, because he’s so believable. Lying, manipulating, selfish and dishonourable, yet he produces all this from an opening scene where he appears to be a perfectly honourable General (though one has one’s suspicions). Even at the very end, when some small measure of genuine justice has been wrung from the whole sorry mess, one of the few remaining almost-likeable characters is fully unmasked as just as bad as the rest. Kubrick tries to instil some hope with his final scene, but by then he’s done too fine a job of wiping it out.

There’s a debate, it seems, about whether this can accurately be described as an anti-war film. It’s patently not pro-war, with its ineffective officers, self-serving high command, corrupt legal system and senseless slaughter for absolutely no military gain; but the argument that it is less a commentary on war and more on human nature — how people, not just soldiers, respond to the opportunity for glory, and how they attempt to cover their own tracks when it goes wrong — certainly holds some weight. The final scene, which is in almost every other respect entirely unrelated to the main narrative, supports such a theory, as does the source of the title. But just because that’s true doesn’t mean it’s not anti-war as well; or, at the very least, anti-military (if that’s not the same thing).

Perhaps reaction to the film depends on your ideological stance. I’m all too prepared to believe the military is corrupt and unjust because, well, that’s how they always seem. As such, Paths of Glory does an outstanding job of fulfilling and reinforcing these preconceptions, particularly in its refusal to end justly. If you have some measure of faith in the forces, however, you may think it’s an unjustified attack on your beloved institution. Each to their own.

5 out of 5

Paths of Glory is on ITV4 tomorrow, Sunday 31st August 2014, at 11:20am.

(Originally posted on 24th February 2010.)

Wallander: Mastermind (2005)

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aka Mankell’s Wallander: Mastermind

2009 #88
Peter Flinth | 96 mins* | TV | 15

Sixth in the series of Wallander films starring Krister Henriksson as the titular Swedish detective, though only the second to be released theatrically.

Mastermind works to earn its status as a theatrical release, everyone upping their game to provide something more filmic than the other direct-to-DVD entries in the series. That’s not to say the other films in the series are bad — they’re certainly as well-produced as any other detective series on TV — but this episode seems to have been constructed from the outset with an eye on a standalone cinema release, rather than just randomly plucking an episode from the thirteen produced to receive such an honour.

From the start (literally) there are slicker opening titles, and longer end credits to bookend that. The direction is flashier too — still grounded in reality, unlike the heavily-stylised British Wallander, but with more filmic shot choices and editing. Take, for example, the Rear Window-inspired scene where Wallander looks out over the adjacent block of flats while listening to classical music that completely fills the soundtrack — not the kind of sequence you tend to find in TV drama. On-going subplots from the series go unreferenced — there’s no need to have seen a single other episode to follow the story without a hitch.

The main plot’s on a bigger scale — a serial murderer who has eyes and ears inside the police department — and This Time It’s Personal for good measure, with the villain targeting friends and family and (spoiler) a past connection to several characters. It’s not a realistic-scale case-of-the-week, but a once-in-a-career unusual case, the kind of plot that graces serial killer films (Se7en comes to mind, obviously) in a way those case-of-the-week plots rarely do. It stretches credibility a little, as these types of tale often do, which does at times leave it feeling a tad out of place in Wallander’s grounded world, which is usually about more realistic murders rather than megalomaniac super-powerful serial killers. Still, it ups the ante appropriately, making the events more action-packed and conforming to the theory that films should never have a “just another day at the office”-style plot.

With the extra effort afforded to make this series instalment appropriately cinematic, the Wallander team achieve their aim and produce one of the stand-out of all thirteen films. That said, some viewers of the whole series may find it a bit OTT when compared to the series’ regular style.

4 out of 5

* The running time is listed as 102 minutes on IMDb, but 96 is taken directly from the BBC’s iPlayer.

(Originally posted on 14th February 2010.)

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

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2009 #70
Otto Preminger | 91 mins | TV | 12

Where the Sidewalk EndsOtto Preminger’s film noir — scripted by Ben Hecht, adapted from William L. Stuart’s novel by Robert E. Kent, Frank P. Rosenberg and Victor Trivas, and quite what the difference between “adapting” and “writing” are I’m not sure — offers complex characters in a multi-layered plot. The ending particularly underlines this: the filmmakers could’ve killed anti-hero Dixon, could’ve had him choose to not open the letter, etc; but the decision he takes and the reactions of others are all relatively complex. Earlier, the sequences following Paine’s death are well constructed to produce the maximum amount of tension; their plotting clever, allowing for multiple (albeit similar) interpretations of events. Things happen which seem irrelevant, but are of course none-more-relevant later. Few films today are so brave as to not explain such things immediately.

There are lots of great scenes like these — look at the single scene featuring Klein and his wife, for example. It doesn’t have to be there — Klein could’ve just given his partner the cash — but for the sake of one short scene we get two proper characters. Yes, they’re quickly and sketchily drawn, but believable with it. The same goes for the old woman listening to the radio — does it matter that her husband’s dead, that she sits there for company, which she only gets because Paine always waves to her? Not particularly — but that it is there really adds to the film. Even the crooks get similar treatment, tiny elements (such as one character’s parole) progressing and returning, almost insignificant subplots that all have a place and function in the greater story.

Dana Andrews is an effective lead, believable as Dixon the thuggish cop. We support him, but only just — he doesn’t quite have the instant likeability of Bogie’s Marlowe, for example, but he’s enough on the side of right that we can get behind him. Gary Merrill’s Scalise is an appropriate villain. He’s not in it much — a little at the beginning, a little at the end — but he permeates the film to a degree, the uncatchable boss just out of reach, who Dixon wants to pin everything on.

All the other performances are good too, but perhaps most memorable is Karl Malden as newly-promoted Lt. Thomas. He’s both good at his job and bungling — for example, he creates a completely plausible theory of how Jiggs did the crime, convincing all around him; but the viewer knows how incorrect and circumstantial it all is, which makes Thomas look slightly bumbling even when he’s apparently on to a winner. Malden doesn’t make him too silly or bungling — he could be like Nigel Bruce’s Watson, for example — but nor does it go too far the other way, making him so hardline that he becomes a villainous figure. It’s a fine line that Malden negotiates with skill.

I really enjoyed Where the Sidewalk Ends, perhaps more than I expected to, and I should say it narrowly missed out on my 2009 Top Ten.

5 out of 5

Fatal Instinct (1993)

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2009 #86
Carl Reiner | 90 mins | download | 15 / PG-13

Fatal InstinctHaving just recently laid into High Anxiety, a spoof in a broadly similar style that also took on thrillers, it seems a little hypocritical to praise this, which flopped so badly in the US it went straight to video over here. Unfortunately, life isn’t that simple, and where Mel Brooks’ effort failed to amuse me this succeeded.

The plot, such as it is, doesn’t bear much discussion, being a loose amalgamation of half a dozen other films in the name of spoofery. So too the performances — no one distinguishes themselves as a comedic genius, but none let the side down. Reiner’s direction is equally fine, setting up and paying off the visual, verbal and aural jokes perfectly well. He drops the ball in a couple of instances however, allowing several jokes to run on well past their natural conclusion, and indulging in a few well-worn staples of the genre — the on-screen-musicians-playing-the-score turn up, for example, although at least there’s a nice variation at one point involving a tape player.

It’s a little difficult to understand exactly why it flopped so badly in the US as it followed in the wake of the similarly-styled Hot Shots!, which was successful enough to spawn a sequel. But then perhaps exactly that hindered it — Fatal Instinct’s release came just a few months after Hot Shots! Part Deux.

Or perhaps its targets were just too broad to attract a mass audience. While it ostensibly tackles then-recent thrillers like Basic Instinct, Cape Fear and Fatal Attraction (though the latter was already six years old at this point), it also has a lot of time devoted to the tropes of film noir, in particular Double Indemnity. Relying so heavily on a 50-year-old film isn’t likely to earn you much favour among the masses.

I’ve not seen any of those ’80s/’90s thrillers it targets, but Fatal Instinct seems to stick to the most famous bits, making the references easy to appreciate even for those with just a passing knowledge. Conversely, it seemed to me that having seen Double Indemnity would be a major advantage. But then again, perhaps that’s simply because I spotted the references to it and missed references to the films I hadn’t seen without, er, missing them, and anyone who hadn’t seen Double Indemnity would survive in much the same way. At the very least I’m sure it’s easier to follow than this paragraph…

Fatal Instinct may not be terribly original in and of itself — though, obviously, the films it chooses to spoof set it apart from its kin — and some of the gags are very much old hat (a roving camera bumps into something and breaks the lens, for instance), while others go on too long — as does the film itself, actually — but anyone who enjoyed all the films mentioned in this review may find it’s capable of raising a few smiles.

3 out of 5

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

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2009 #64
Bryan Forbes | 111 mins | TV | PG

Seance on a Wet AfternoonDespite being an early-60s British domestic drama, Seance on a Wet Afternoon has a plot that one might describe as high-concept: a medium kidnaps a little girl so she can prove her abilities by revealing where the girl is. But, unsurprisingly, the execution is more in line with its roots: more drama than overblown thriller, not so much about the kidnap plot as the psychological state of Kim Stanley’s medium, Myra Savage, and her downtrodden husband, played by Richard Attenborough.

It certainly doesn’t start high-concept either, beginning with a near-15-minute dialogue-driven enigmatically expository two-hander. Some would consider the whole film too slow, I’m sure, but once it gets past this (to be frank, over-long) opening it maintains an appropriate pace. It never threatens to become a thrill-a-minute rollercoaster ride, but what it does do is build tension and gradually unveil the true natures of the two leads. In this regard it becomes something of a showcase for Stanley and Attenborough.

In a word, Stanley’s performance is stunning. Initially just a Hyacinth Bucket-esque overbearing wife, as the film continues we learn more about her almost solely from what Stanley brings to the role. By the final scene, when the truth of her character is laid bare, there’s little doubt that she’s given an extraordinary performance. She was Oscar-nominated for her role, losing out to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins. I love Mary Poppins as much as the next well-adjusted human being, but Andrews’ relatively simple role isn’t a patch on the complexity Stanley has to offer.

In the face of this stiff acting competition, Attenborough holds his own throughout. His transformation is more understated perhaps — the ‘revelation’ here being that he is not downtrodden but in fact incredibly supportive, something that will only dawn on the viewer late on but shed a subtly different light on what has gone before — plus there is a degree of skill in portraying a character doing reprehensible things but who remains the audience’s surrogate ’til the last.

Bryan Forbes’ direction is also first-rate. He keeps things clear and simple during dialogue scenes, but adds scale with location work in busy London streets, and flair during a few tense sequences. The best of these is the second seance, where the kidnapped girl sleeps in a room next door. As she begins to stir, the viewer is torn between wanting the Savage’s plan to succeed and wanting the girl to be rescued from their misguided scheme. Such a dichotomy of feeling is entirely reliant on the skill displayed by Stanley, Attenborough and Forbes up to that point, building our allegiance to these characters in spite of what they’ve done.

Unfortunately, the film isn’t without its flaws. The story doesn’t always hold up — some of the police procedure is dubious at best, while the Savages’ scheme comes off as much through chance and luck as planning. In fairness, our ability to spot the former is probably in part thanks to decades of police procedurals filling the TV schedules, while the latter actually fits the under-confident, ill-prepared, dubiously-sane protagonists, and coincidence is mostly confined to the plot’s early stages. Some elements of the plan make you wonder how they ever thought they’d get away with it, though at the same time you have to allow that maybe they just weren’t that self-aware.

The real key to the film, however, is what’s slowly revealed over its course: Myra Savage’s mentality, as well as the truth about the history of her abilities and marital situation. To reveal any details would ruin the carefully controlled slow explanation of who these people are and what background they come from, all of which builds to a beautifully performed final few scenes. Seance on a Wet Afternoon may have a high concept driving its plot, but the true delights are to be found in its characters and the actors’ performances of them.

4 out of 5

Brute Force (1947)

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2009 #73
Jules Dassin | 94 mins | TV | 12

Brute ForceJules Dassin’s prison-set noir concerns a group of inmates trying to escape from the cruel regime of a vicious warden, allowed free reign by an ineffectual governor and target-driven bureaucrats (nothing changes, eh?)

Tonally, it’s varied. Early on it’s quite humourous, with a weak warden, jaunty calypso-singing inmate (who occasionally threatens to tip the whole thing over into a musical) and amusingly drunk doctor. Then there are the flashbacks to the outside world, laden with undercooked romance and awkward dialogue. In the final act it turns decidedly grim: warden Munsey lives up to his lowly reputation, goading one prisoner to suicide and beating another close to death, while the other wardens listen on from outside; one of the good guys betrays his mates, ultimately leading to wholesale slaughter as the escape plan goes awry. A balanced, varied tone is not necessarily a problem, but the flashbacks are almost uniformly unwelcome asides and, by separating the distinctly comical from the resolutely grim by placing them firmly at either end of the film, they don’t quite gel as a whole.

Still, the climactic prison break — including the build-up — is a brilliant extended sequence. Tense, epic and exciting, it concludes with a fantastic action sequence. It also delivers a powerful moral message, underlined by its direct delivery from a prison staff member rather than an inmate. It goes some way to make up for the earlier flaws, like the dialogue that’s occasionally typical of the period’s worst — “I’m just a guy who… explained his entire backstory in one slightly long and unwieldy sentence to someone who already knew it”.

What gets forgotten in all this, perhaps most depressingly, is the fate of those on the outside. We’re told early on that Collins’ love is refusing treatment for her cancer until she sees him again. This seems ready-made to provide justification for a prisoner to escape; indeed, the whole film is skewed this way, as we never discover many of the inmates’ crimes, and those we do hear are either done for good reason or not that bad. But it toes the more obvious moral line by having no one escape, and while the cancer isn’t mentioned again after the slaughter, it leaves what might otherwise seem a morally justifiable cheat (the prisoners are the good guys here — we expect and want them to triumph — but that they don’t is ‘correct’) with a bitter taste.

3 out of 5

Ripley’s Game (2002)

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2009 #67
Liliana Cavani | 106 mins | TV | 15 / R

Ripley's GameMatt Damon is back as… Oh, wait, no he isn’t — he’s turned into John Malkovich.

Not quite — there’s no reasonable way Ripley’s Game can be considered a sequel to Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley. Though it’s adapted from a later novel in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series (previously filmed as the Dennis Hopper-starring The American Friend, incidentally), the action is relocated to the present day, and it’d be a pretty hard sell to believe Matt Damon would grow up to be John Malkovich.

Despite the acclaim of Minghella’s effort just three years earlier, and a cast that includes recognisable faces such as a Ray Winstone, Dougray Scott and Lena Headey alongside Malkovich, Ripley’s Game snuck out with barely anyone noticing, including going straight to TV in the US. There are surely reasons for this, reports of a problematic shoot probably among them, but the neglect is undeserved. In 2006, Roger Ebert saw fit to include it in his Great Movies list, though other critics are less favourable (the Radio Times, for one handy example, rate it just three out of five). While Ebert is in my opinion overselling the film by including it in a list of the best films ever made ever, it’s certainly an above average, consummately made, and constantly entertaining Euro-thriller.

Perhaps the difference in opinion about the film stems from one, arguably crucial, sticking point: the Radio Times criticises the humour included in the murders and thriller sections, viewing it as a failure of director Liliana Cavani; conversely, Ebert approves of it, praising them as appearing somewhere “between a massacre and the Marx Brothers”. There’s undoubtedly more to the diverging opinions than this, but it’s at least emblematic. I’m inclined to agree with Ebert: these sequences do have tension — not the most one’s ever experienced in a thriller, but enough — but they marry the humour to it, leaving you chuckling on the edge of your seat.

For the most part the story keeps moving, twisting and turning in sometimes unexpected directions. Other films would happily take the first half-hour or so of this and stretch it to a whole feature, but screenwriters Charles McKeown and Cavani — adapting from Highsmith’s novel, of course, so the credit lies with her — take the premise further and in new directions. It’s not flawless, with the climax by far the biggest let down: Ripley and Trevanny hole up in the former’s villa, preparing for a veritable war as Ripley anticipates goodness-knows how many men to turn up. When it’s only two, it seems more believable than a whole army of mafia goons descending on the relatively insignificant pair, but it’s also distinctly anticlimactic after the hype. Still, at least the story has a final twist up its sleeve.

Malkovich may be a fairly respected actor, but to me he’s always seemed detached, flat, or mannered — often all three. Here, he’s still all three, but it suits Ripley’s unusual character down to the ground. His dry wit and incessant matter-of-fact delivery craft a quietly sinister, stalking nature, aiding the character’s believable unpredictability — that is to say, you’re never certain what he’s going to do next, but when he does it’s not surprising. I’ve never read a Ripley novel (there are five) nor seen another Ripley film (there are four), but Malkovich’s performance fits so perfectly I have little doubt this is precisely how Ripley should be played.

Among the rest of the cast, Ray Winstone is landed with a role he could play in his sleep, Lena Headey is perfectly fine as an unremarkable wife, and Scot Dougray Scott plays a none-more-plummy Brit. Unfortunately this accent sometimes seems to be the main focus of his performance, and it occasionally falters when he gets highly emotional, but it’s not really a problem… though it is rather odd to hear if you’re familiar with how he normally sounds. His character, Trevanny, is primarily a pawn in Ripley’s titular amusement, leaving Scott with only a passing hint of the character arc with which the role could have been gifted.

As noted earlier, there are numerous tales of problems on set, not least the multinational cast coping with a multinational crew in multiple nations, culminating in Cavani leaving towards the end of shooting and directorial duties being fulfilled by Malkovich. But as many have noted before, happy sets can produce dreadful movies and unhappy sets masterpieces, and while I don’t quite share the view that Ripley’s Game is entirely the latter, it certainly errs more in that direction than the other.

4 out of 5

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

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2009 #55
Boris Ingster | 64 mins | TV

Stranger on the Third FloorDespite being “released the same month as Raoul Walsh’s They Drive By Night, and four months after Alfred Hitchcock’s Gothic Noir Rebecca,” says Paul Duncan in The Pocket Essential Film Noir, “this is often listed as the first Film Noir”. Not often enough to earn the treatment you’d expect such an accolade to afford, it would seem, as I hear it’s rarely screened and only available on DVD in Spain. That’s a shame, because it’s an entertaining — if brief — example of the genre.

The story is a morality tale of sorts. A journalist is the key witness to convict a man of murder, albeit on fairly circumstantial evidence; the journalist’s fiancee disagrees with what he did, though he tries to persuade her round to his way of thinking; but then the journalist finds himself in virtually the same situation, and it’s up to the fiancee to prove his innocence. And that’s most of the plot I’m afraid, though to be frank it’s fairly ancillary anyway.

The screenplay is a little slight and stretches its credibility — would a man really be convicted on such circumstantial evidence, for example? It plays structural tricks too: at one point the lead character is arrested off screen and the focus switches to his fiancee for the remainder of the film. Perhaps they didn’t have the money left for a cell set. Such leaps suggest an underdeveloped story, but on the bright side it certainly keeps things moving.

Despite these faults, many individual scenes are rather good. The journalist spends half the film pacing his room, for example, contemplating whether his irritating neighbour is dead or not, but it remains gripping. When he sleeps he has a nightmare, a showcase not only for the expressionist-influenced cinematography, but also the writing: the opening trial scene features a humourously inattentive judge and sleepy jury, but the exact same elements return to haunt our hero when he dreams he’s in the dock.

The climax is virtually the only scene to feature top-billed Peter Lorre to any significant degree, here fulfilling a couple of days left on his RKO contract with a small role. Nonetheless, in this one scene he out-acts the rest of the cast put together, using just a few lines of backstory to really flesh out his underwritten character. The sequence where the fiancee tries to escape him is suitably sinister. Still, the scene is over quickly and without the fullest logic in its execution — much like the film as a whole.

Stranger on the Third Floor is so imbued with the recognisable calling cards of noir in its cinematography, characters and plot points that it feels more like an entry in a well-established genre than a formative inclusion. At only just over an hour it is, on the one hand, too brief to dig into its characters or complicate its story, but on the other, it rattles past quickly enough that the good bits impress, the weak bits are only briefly registered, and it’s over long before anyone might even consider considering it a waste of time.

4 out of 5

Eastern Promises (2007)

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2009 #32
David Cronenberg | 97 mins | DVD | 18 / R

Eastern PromisesArguably most famous for his horror films of the ’80s (though a couple of his ’90s efforts could stake a claim), director David Cronenberg widened his appeal somewhat with the excellent crime thriller A History of Violence. Here he reunites with star Viggo Mortensen for another grim tale, switching the bright searing heat of the American Midwest for the rain-drenched nighttime streets of our fair capital.

Despite some similarities in plot and theme, Eastern Promises failed to engage me in the same way as the earlier effort. Perhaps this is because it plays tag with its central character, beginning with Naomi Watts’ do-gooder nurse before shifting focus to Mortensen’s mafia chauffeur with nary a blink. It’s an unusual transition, and consequently it’s hard to tell whether it’s skillful writing or a fortuitous accident that it comes off seamlessly. One theoretical screenwriting argument would have it that the film is actually all about Christine, the baby, and that’s why it works, but that feels a little too pretentious to engage with now.

Tied around the baby’s fate, screenwriter Steven Knight factors in some appropriately dark elements, like white slavery or the relocated criminal underworld that currently operates in the UK. Though these are handled with a certain amount of care, they’ve been covered in greater depth elsewhere (the excellent miniseries Sex Traffic, for example) and here are reduced to pawns in a different tale. This isn’t necessarily inappropriate, but remembering the detail from other such dramas can leave the topics’ inclusion here feeling lightweight.

Elsewhere, the screenplay suffers from some awkward dialogue exchanges and barely credible logic contrivances being used to jump-start the plot. Most of these come from Watts’ character, who seems too competent for much of the film to pass off as a naïve fool at its start. This may be Watts’ fault, playing her as intelligent when a naïve approach might render her actions more believable, but it seems cruel to lay the blame with her as she’s very strong all round. Armin Mueller-Stahl also gives his typically accomplished turn in his typically key supporting role.

Mortensen’s Oscar-nominated performance is the focus, however. Apparently thoroughly immersed in the role, he gives a distinguished performance throughout and is central to what are by far the film’s most memorable moments: a nude steam baths fight, which has become justifiably infamous (I suspect for the “nude” part, but it’s the “fight” that deserves it), and a game-changing twist, that I sadly had ruined in advance, though there are plenty of clues scattered along the way.

By its end, Eastern Promises has the feel of the first part of something bigger: while the story of the baby is resolved, many others are left open. Unresolved threads aren’t always a problem, but it feels like Cronenberg has more to say in this world. So it’s nice to know a sequel is possibly in the works, because Eastern Promises has the potential to be a Hobbit to some Russian mafia epic’s Lord of the Rings. On the other hand, a similarly low-key follow-up would be just as appropriate.

Though it failed to capture me as much as A History of Violence, possibly due to too-raised expectations, Eastern Promises has the potential to grow with repeated viewings. And either type of continuation would be most welcome.

4 out of 5

Unfortunately, plans for a sequel ultimately fell apart in 2012. Some more details can be read here.

Red Riding: 1983 (2009)

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aka Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983

2009 #52
Anand Tucker | 100 mins | TV (HD) | 15

Red Riding: 1983The Red Riding Trilogy draws to a close with its finest instalment, a superior work in just about every respect.

From the off, 1983 returns to the story of the previous films, showing events from different perspectives. It’s dominated by a new story — the search for a child kidnapper in the titular year — but even this harks back to the past, the actual kidnapping closely resembling the one that kick-started 1974. Indeed, it’s 1974 that’s primarily drawn upon, confirming 1980 as little more than an aside in the scope of the trilogy.

1983 doesn’t just reiterate, however, but builds on previously-seen events and characters, both overtly — showing the police investigation into Clare Kemplay, which was the story of 1974 — and more subtly — Hunter’s apparent sidekick being present at secret meetings of the Evil Policemen in 1974. Despite clear links to the past, 1983 may also work well enough on its own. It’s undeniable that there’s more depth when viewed in light of the first two films, but most (perhaps all) of it would be comprehensible simply from what’s presented here.

Tucker’s film bests its predecessors in almost every assessable value. The story and characters have more genuine surprises and suspense than ever, while the performances are at the very least the equal of what’s gone before. Unlike the other two films, where the corrupt cops were little more than cartoon villains despite claims to the contrary, 1983 makes their brutality really felt; here, for the first time in the trilogy, their disregard for the law and their vicious methods made me feel sickened and angry, just as they should.

But best of all is the stunning sepia-tinged cinematography, which uses the popular RED cameras to amazing effect. The instances of beauty are too numerous to mention, from obvious moments such as the final scenes of white feathers drifting in slow motion through shards of sunlight as part of a heroic closing image (even if one finds it tonally incongruous, which some surely will, it looks gorgeous), to low-key scenes like Jobson lost in contemplation, the sepia-toned foreground standing out from the blues of the background. The omnipresence of lens flare, an idea that was so annoying when liberally sprinkled across Star Trek, seems to work perfectly here. Perhaps it’s due to consistency: every light source seems to cast streaks across the frame, not just the occasional flourish. The trilogy isn’t yet available on Blu-ray, but for some of the images in this film alone it really should be.

Sadly, 1983 still isn’t perfect. Many plot threads are tied off, or we can infer our own explanations for the missing bits, but significant others are left hanging, not least what happened to the numerous corrupt police officers. We don’t necessarily need to see them come to justice — though that might be nice, obviously — or even a summary of the rest of their life, but some nod of a conclusion to their stories would be appreciated. Elsewhere, BJ’s narration is slightly twee, which is a shame because his story is both compelling and one of very few that is actually told across all three films, even though he’s barely noticed at first, rather than just starring in one and cameoing in the others.

I enjoyed 1983 immensely, much more so than either of the preceding films, so it’s only minor flaws like these that hold it back from full marks.

4 out of 5