Prime Suspect 3 (1993)

Not even bad in a good way

It is a performances centric movie

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I'm running out of superlatives for the Prime Suspect series. Series 3 is another gripping crime drama, this time set against the background of the world of London rent boys. Despite it's lengthy we were tempted to watch in one sitting, though we didn't quite manage it! The highlights this time are long scenes showing DCI Tennison interviews witnesses and suspects. This shows Helen Mirren at her finest, portraying an intelligent police detective who knows exactly how to structure an interview to get the truth from people.The theme of police corruption also looms large right from the very start. Glimpses of Tennison's rather sad personal life are also shown.She's still off the ciggies though!

"Keeper of Souls" is IMO the best of the Prime Suspect series because it's the darkest of the lot. In the end, justice is only partly served by proxy - a muckraking, obnoxious journalist - and we don't even see it happening; we leave the plot as Tennyson, having failed to get a conviction from, or produce conclusive evidence on Parker-Jones (an excessively scary Ciaran Hinds) who is clearly guilty as charged, abandons the files in the interview room for the journalist to peruse and plunder.We have become used to crime stories without happy endings - most notably in the Law & Order series - but "Keeper of the Souls" is particularly disturbing because it deals with the organized abuse of children and a pedophile ring leading to Police HQ and hushed up by authority.However, the greatest feat is that the story - on such a bleak background - presents us with a string of extremely touching destinies; the drag artist who tries to help, but is too frightened to offer anything but vague clues that Tennyson is unable to decipher; the policeman who is placed on the squad to spy on Tennyson, but who switches allegiance after being bitten by an AIDS-infected boy, another policeman who earns Tennyson's respect by admitting in front of the team that he is gay, the two underage boys who die during the investigation, and, most notably, Tennyson suffering a 30 seconds breakdown after having decided to have her pregnancy terminated, thus giving up on having children altogether, a decision which will continue to haunt her throughout the series (until the final episode in which she befriends the 14-year-old Penny whom she sees as the daughter she might have had – only to find out that she is the killer Tennyson has been looking for).At the end of "Keeper," almost nothing is solved; we don't know if the bitten police spy (who turns out to be a good guy after all) has really contracted AIDS, and there is no legal prosecution of the killer, only an indication that he may be exposed in the press (and will probably not sue the paper for fear of further investigation, we must conclude).All of two unexpected star appearances flank Mirren: As the reluctant victim of abuse who refuses to testify in court we see Jonny Lee Miller just before he rose to stardom with "Trainspotting", and David Thewliss – fresh from "Naked" – appears as a terrifying hit-man.

Everything everyone is saying about this one is true. One thing to add: it's a lot for a single sitting. It runs almost four hours. People couldn't have had an option when it was transmitted on telly - they had to wait for the subsequent episodes - but when you rent or purchase it now you can't be forced into that option - and you'll find it nigh on impossible to break things off at the hour or two hour mark - it's just too good as everyone says.Perhaps the best news is that Lynda La Plante is back. Episode two wasn't bad - but it wasn't La Plante's writing and it didn't have her magical hand on it. This one does. It's as if she took all the stuff she found out worked in the first episode, concentrated it, and flung it back. Everything is deeper, grittier, gorier.There are seven huge episodes in this opus, all told twenty two hours of viewing. So to single out any one episode and say it's 'best' is going to be difficult, but taking only the first three it's not hard to see which excel more than others, and this one has to rank right at the very top.

The 3rd of the series is very honest and full of emotional reaction to the life of all most everyone in the series. But was very confused and at least wanted the "bad guy" to get pinched for the murder! Thought I missed out on something. It was like reading a mystery and then finding that the last chapter was missing. But, beyond that, it truly was and is outstanding! Good job all around! Mirren is strong and yet we see a very touching side of her when it comes to a medical question. The seediness of the whole "rent boy" world was well shown without pointing fingers or moral questions answered, which in all honesty is for better minds then wrote, acted and viewed this series. Perhaps that is why, "the end" is, after all, correct for this look into what we outside see as an almost "unreal" world/way of life.