Not just one movie; three separate but connected movies set in 1974, 1980, and 1983, with three separate and unconnected directors (Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker, in order), and three separate protagonists (a mop-haired cub reporter, a cold-case special investigator, and a portly attorney, played in turn by Andrew Garfield, Paddy Considine, and Mark Addy). Each concerns itself with serial sex crimes in Yorkshire, the first and third concerned with the same series of crimes against schoolgirls and the second concerned more with crimes against prostitutes. As the minutes and the miseries mount up, you might come to feel that the middle part of the triptych could beneficially have been skipped and that the boldness of the conception is perhaps only two-thirds as bold as it looked at the outset. (It would not have looked at all bold if the movies were exhibited here as they were exhibited at home in Britain: on television.) The three share in common, however, unintelligible local accents, colorless color, staggering body counts, a thoroughly sordid vision of police corruption and brutality (ranging from thuggish roughing-up to Medieval torture), and a pervasive sense of unchecked malignance, or “evil” as the poster has it, which is as unrealistic in its opposite way as the righteous justice dispensed by comic-book superheroes. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd