Rating: B-
Dir: Julian Jarrold
Star: Andrew Garfield, Sean Bean, Rebecca Hall, David Morrisey
Hot-shot young journalist Eddie Dunford (Garfield) returns to Yorkshire after a failed attempt to make it in London. Assigned the job of covering a missing girl for his newspaper, he comes to believe that the disapperanace is connected to other children who have vanished over the past years. The local police, under Detective Superintendent Jobson (Morrissey) seem uninterested in the suggestion, but Eddie persists, even when warned by a colleague that he is getting into dangerous territoy – a colleague who ends up dead, decapitated in a what appears to be a freak accident.
Eddie persists, becoming involved with Paula Garland (Hall), the mother of a previous victim who is also seeing local building tycoon, John Dawson (Bean). He owns the land where one of the murdered girls is – tortured, raped, and strangled, with swan wings stitched into her back. This could well be the story of a lifetime for Eddie; if only he can live long enough to find out what’s going on. It’s grim up North. That seems to be the message here, with society overseen by a cartel of corrupt cops, businessmen and politicians who, as stated explicitly at one point, “Do what we want” – up to, and including, abduction, torture, child abuse and murder.
It’s certainly a world for which Dunford is completely unprepared, and the lure of Garland only acts as a dangerous distraction. The web of deceit, conspiracy and underlying current of violence is impressive, though the failure to explain significant elements, e.g. the swan wings, is a shame. You may want to track down subtitles too, as the accents here are often as thick as a black pudding. Given the last thing time we saw Bean, he was running around Middle-earth, this is pretty different, and it’s good to see him back on villainous territory. Cross 1970’s Yorkshire off the places we’ll be visiting in our time-machine, however.