A great trilogy that just falls apart in the final act. In the first two films, we followed one protagonist on their mission to bring a killer to justice while also bringing down corruption within the Yorkshire police force. In 1983 however, the narrative fractures into three separate people, two of them having been involved from the start. We follow a member of the force who has for some reason just now decided after ten years of being corrupt and feeling bad about it that he's actually going to do something, a loser lawyer who basically gets yelled at until he tries to save the innocents that have been harmed by this seed of evil and a young male prostitute who has just had enough of all the wicked.
The film doesn't have enough time to fully resolve all of it's story lines, but it tries very hard to wrap it all up as efficiently as possible. I admire this in a way (with something like this I'd rather have everything resolved over a lot being left wide open), but as a result the entire thing feels very rushed and a lot of stuff comes seemingly out of nowhere to help tie it all up in a neat bow. Aside from the whole thing being very rushed and all over the place, the actual narrative structure of the film takes a bizarre and disjointed shift. The other two films had pretty straight-forward narratives, but this one tries to do so many different things to help explain it all.
There are flashbacks to the events of 1974, to help explain more about the corruption back in that day, but aside from the first time they never tell us when we're going back in time and sometimes it's honestly a little hard to figure out when we are. Along with that, we spend almost half of our time back in 1974, so the film doesn't even really feel like it should be titled 1983 because the focus doesn't seem to be much on it. They throw in some voice-over narration that feels very out of place as well, I guess to help with the lack of worthy screen time for one of our main players.
Don't get me wrong, the themes are still strong and I love the grit and darkness of this entire trilogy, but this one just falls apart on so many levels. There's a whole subplot with a mystic that feels very out of place for such a grounded series and in some scenes they turn these corrupt police officers into such overbearing caricatures that you can't even buy that they're just greedy, selfish men who abuse their power. When they stand in a circle and toast themselves by saying, "To the North! Where we do what we want!" you can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
The biggest surprise of it all is that, despite being very rushed and all over the place, the film drags along a lot. They should have had more time to properly explain everything, but even with that belief I was still losing interest in a lot of scenes. Overall, just a massive disappointment after two great films that came before it.
The film doesn't have enough time to fully resolve all of it's story lines, but it tries very hard to wrap it all up as efficiently as possible. I admire this in a way (with something like this I'd rather have everything resolved over a lot being left wide open), but as a result the entire thing feels very rushed and a lot of stuff comes seemingly out of nowhere to help tie it all up in a neat bow. Aside from the whole thing being very rushed and all over the place, the actual narrative structure of the film takes a bizarre and disjointed shift. The other two films had pretty straight-forward narratives, but this one tries to do so many different things to help explain it all.
There are flashbacks to the events of 1974, to help explain more about the corruption back in that day, but aside from the first time they never tell us when we're going back in time and sometimes it's honestly a little hard to figure out when we are. Along with that, we spend almost half of our time back in 1974, so the film doesn't even really feel like it should be titled 1983 because the focus doesn't seem to be much on it. They throw in some voice-over narration that feels very out of place as well, I guess to help with the lack of worthy screen time for one of our main players.
Don't get me wrong, the themes are still strong and I love the grit and darkness of this entire trilogy, but this one just falls apart on so many levels. There's a whole subplot with a mystic that feels very out of place for such a grounded series and in some scenes they turn these corrupt police officers into such overbearing caricatures that you can't even buy that they're just greedy, selfish men who abuse their power. When they stand in a circle and toast themselves by saying, "To the North! Where we do what we want!" you can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
The biggest surprise of it all is that, despite being very rushed and all over the place, the film drags along a lot. They should have had more time to properly explain everything, but even with that belief I was still losing interest in a lot of scenes. Overall, just a massive disappointment after two great films that came before it.