Wednesday 30 September 2015

Prime Suspect 2 (1992 John Strickland)

Written by La Plante and Alan Cubitt, who wrote The Boys Are Back and The Fall. This one's about racism, and has a memorable scene (still done in the dry verité style) showing how a string of bad decisions, mistakes and personal feelings cause death of young (black) youth in custody. There are a couple of stand-out performances - his - James Fraser - and that of his sister Ashley James, who's hardly been in anything, but when she completes her long one take to camera confession to Mirren we expected to hear the cheers of all the cast and crew off camera.

Colin Salmon is the new DI who fucks up, Craig Fairbrass is initially hostile but ends up being one of several people who blatantly lie in court to cover up the death - another powerful statement. John Benfield is the frustrated Guv and the rest of the team are intact. Plus we have an early appearance of Nina Sosanya, who since then has been in everything.

Quite interesting watching a 'modern' film in 4x3 - it focuses the attention / action, but feels like it's been framed for 1.66:1 then cropped in camera - not like the old days.

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