No.250 : The Ripper (TV) (2020)

The Ripper (TV) 2020 at the IMDb

 I was born in 1971 and in many ways the Yorkshire Ripper was my first experience of an ongoing hunt for a serial killer. I do have a distinct memory of the murder of Jacqueline Hill being reported in November 1980 and of it being the talk of the schoolyard. Fortunately she was the last victim, with Peter Sutcliffe being arrested soon after, after being picked up for offences unrelated to his murders.

I have been interested in the case and enjoyed a three part pod cast on the Case File site  which I’d strongly recommend. It went into greater depth than the Netflix TV show we are discussing now, but they are clearly different approaches to the same horrific crimes.

This Netflix documentary series is in four parts of roughly an hour each. They are presented in chronological order with the first setting the scene, the middle two covering the murders and the investigation and the last dealing with Peter Sutcliffe’s capture and the fallout of the investigation which, by all accounts, was botched and contributed to at least some of the murders being allowed to happen.

The series uses mainly archive footage and is pretty familiar in its approach, with a voiceover explaining what is happening set against news reports and newspaper headlines of the time. What sets this series apart however, is the present day interviews with many of the key players, which  included the son of one of the early victims who relives the trauma of learning of his mother’s demise and her character assassination in the press who dubbed her as a prostitute.

Other talking heads include Bruce Jones of Coronation Street fame who discovered one of the bodies as well as police personnel and journalists who worked the case at the time. I didn’t learn too much from this series, but what was done well was the telling of the story with events laid out in chronological order with graphics showing where each of the women died, relative to each other.

They also delved into Sutcliffe’s other crimes, many of which were forgotten when his 13 murders were being discussed. Several women survived his assaults and it was haunting to hear their first hand accounts of their encounters with the maniac.

The clear message from the series was one of police incompetence. The Ripper was interviewed nine times, with one officer telling us that he told his bosses that he had found the suspect only to be rebuffed owing to Sutcliffe not fitting the profile that had been created. There was also a lot of content devoted to the misogyny of the police and the public’s attitude towards the victims who were painted as worthless due to some being prostitutes. This was a valid thread for the programme but they did spend a lot of time on it with lots of opinions being offered about contemporary attitudes. 

This was fine and laudable but it was at the expense of other aspects of the case being unexplored - Sutcliffe himself didn’t get much of a profile with his motivations being largely untouched. We know he’s a nutter but what took him to that place and what made him so adept at murder and at evading capture? The other villain of the piece, the hoaxer ‘Weirside Jack’, was also not discussed in depth which was a shame as this was a thread the show left hanging. The hoaxes, which were bought wholesale by the police, contributed greatly to at least three murders being allowed to happen and I’d liked to have seen this aspect being explored. I did read up on it and the miscreant concerned got 8 years after a cold case investigation captured him in 2000.

Overall this was a well made and compelling series that paid due respect to the victims involved and highlighted the issues that led this murderer the chance to run free for a decade. It’s hopeful that lessons have been learned as it was clear that the policemen involved in this investigation couldn’t find their arse with both hands. At the end it was blind luck that netted the Ripper with the police investigation being as much use as a cock flavoured lollypop.

This was a crime of its time that will never happen again due to advances in DNA detection, CCTV and computing. The police were clearly negligent but the crimes belonged to one man alone, and that shouldn’t be forgotten amongst all the finger pointing.

This was a good and worthwhile effort but it was too short with the ending seeming somewhat rushed. The material could easily have filled 12 one hour episodes and I hope a ‘director’s cut’ that explores all the hanging threads is in the works.

The Tag Line : Ripper Yarns   70%

No.235 : The Irishman (2019)

 

The Irishman at the IMDb

I’d put off watching ‘The Irishman’ due to its infamous length of over three hours, but having watched it in two sessions it just flew by and it’s certainly one you should look up. That said it could have done with some serious editing with a lot of stuff padded out, or not really necessary to tell the story.

The Irishman of the title is Frank Sheeran, a hit man and union leader played by Robert De Niro. We meet him at first in an old folks home where he’s recounting his story to an unseen person. His story dissolves to a flashback where he, Joe Pesci and their wives are heading to a wedding. Their car breaks down and De Niro and Pesci reminisce about how they first met. So the flashback becomes a further flashback to the days when De Niro was a truck driver and Pesci a gang boss.

De Niro soon rises through the ranks of the local mob by ‘painting houses’ a euphemism for whacking people, normally with a couple of shots in the back of the head meaning their walls get a nice bit of decoration. Pesci's mob boss works closely with the Teamsters trucking union which is run by Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and De Niro is loaned to him to help out with some business. He later becomes a union organiser himself and as the years pass we witness their involvement in the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy assassination amongst other dubious events.

Meanwhile De Niro is estranged from his four daughters, mainly because he’s such a big psycho that beats up the local grocer and for all the murders. The pivotal event of the film is the famous disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and it is covered in some detail. Seemingly the facts are disputed but the film certainly hitches its wagon to real life confession of Frank.

We meet loads of other gangsters and the film helpfully adds captions giving their names and how they met their demise - not many died of natural causes! Eventually we are back in the care home with De Niro nearing the end of his days with all his contemporaries having gone before him. Can he find redemption from the church and can he reconcile with his family?

This was a great film that was very much in the same style as ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Casino’. I don’t think it was as good as those films, but they do set a high mark. Essentially you get a trip through 40 years of gangland violence and racketeering set against the soundtrack of the time. It is well documented that the three leads were de-aged by computer and the effect was generally good. I didn’t buy that the 70 year old plus actors were in their 40s but they certainly didn’t look their years.

The sets and costumes were great and the evocation of the eras depicted was well done. The film was too long however, and I think it could have been boiled down to two hours or at least turned into a 4 part mini series. The depiction of Hoffa’s last hours went on for an age and I don’t see what all the talk of a fish did to help the flow of the scenes. You could say it built tension, but I was losing interest as they rambled on about whether it was a cod or halibut.

There were some great supporting performances too with people like Stephen Graham, Jessie Plemons, Bobbie Cannavale and an under used Harvey Keitel all getting a look in.

Overall the film is worth the investment of your time. I think director Martin Scorsese was probably given too much of a free hand as the film was allowed to ramble and go off into irrelevant tangents, so maybe a non-director’s cut is the one to look out for!

Best Bit : Grocer gets checked out    75%

No.9 : The Zodiac (2005)

The Zodiac at the IMDb

Wait, wait , wait comes the cry - that David Fincher film staring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. was called ‘Zodiac’ not ‘The Zodiac’ what a con - I want my money back.

Well, dear reader, you are bang wrong. This 2005 movie is indeed ‘The Zodiac’ and stars the library detective out of ‘Seinfeld’ and one of the lesser Culkin children. Yes the cast list is that starry and it does have a TV movie sensibility but let’s have a look and see if it competes with its behemoth brother.

Both films follow the case of ‘The Zodiac’, a serial killer who plagued San Francisco in the late 1960’s and was never caught. His elusiveness creates a problem for the film makers as there is no resolution to the tale. This to me leaves the whole thing a bit unsatisfying and I did feel slightly cheated after three hours of the Fincher version to be basically told ‘that’s all folks’.

Obviously they can’t make up an ending or pin it on some dead guy but if there isn’t an ending you have to wonder if it’s a good subject for a film in the first place. Both films go for the same approach and that is to follow the detective angle. This is fair enough because all the killers actions and motivations can only be speculated on whereas the investigation is a matter of public record.

In the Fincher film they follow amateur cartoonist sleuth Jake Gyllenhaal whose character, although based on a real person, isn’t touched on in ‘The Zodiac’. This film follows the investigations of Inspector Matt Parish who is charged with solving the case by his library detective boss who presumably had some fine to collect. He follows a few angles and soon gets so obsessed that he undoes his collar and forgets to shave.

We also see the impact the case has on his family with his creepy son seemingly allowed free access to the evidence locker to trawl through the grizzly snaps on his own. There is also an ambitious reporter whom I think is meant to come across as sleazy but in fact seems to be doing a bang up job of keeping the public informed.

The killings themselves are seen from the Zodiac’s P.O.V. and are clumsily handled. The fear and terror he would have carried are totally missing and the murders seem like a Crimewatch re-enactment rather than a slaying in progress. As the years pass the film shows stock footage of the moon landings and race riots as the murders rack up. The Inspector pins all his hopes on one suspect and when that fizzles out it’s hard not to feel that you’ve wasted your time.

The lead actor Justin Chambers, whom I’d never heard of but is seemingly a big noise in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, is very poor especially in the scenes where his obsession threatens to derail his marriage. When we are meant to think he’s going overboard he just comes across like a boozy jerk.

The case is an interesting one and the unanswered questions and unsolved picto-grams make for interesting reading but for a film it just doesn’t work for me - in either version. In it’s favour ‘The Zodiac’ is only 90 minutes and they cover more or less the same plot points as the bloated big budget effort. It is let down by its cheap production however with 1960’s San Francisco never less convincingly evoked - I especially liked the establishing shot of the university sign with a big bit of tape stretched across the area where its web address presumably was.

As a TV movie it may spark some interest that’ll lead you to looking up the details of an interesting case but as an entertainment I’d give the whole Zodiac movie franchise a wide berth. Which is best? Probably ‘The Zodiac’ but only because we’re biased and it’s half the length of its rival.

THE Tag Line : Whodunit? Dunno 56%