The Thin Blue Line
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Movie Reviews of The Thin Blue Line
Movie Review: So well done it's criminal
Summary: 5 Stars
Sorry for the bad pun, but this engrossing documentary is indeed ground-breaking, and memorable. I first watched this film years ago, and its excellence has stuck with me, to the point I've purchased the film so I can share it with my family.
David Harris and Randall Adams hook up in Dallas Texas in 1976, when Adams moves down to find work. He's traveling with his brother, and staying in a motel. Adams' car runs out of gas, when 16-year-old Harris picks him up in a stolen car. Adams thinks he can help Harris get a job where he has just found a job. Instead, Harris frames him for the murder of a police officer.
Based largely upon the testimony of a pint-sized habitual criminal Harris, Adams is sentenced to death.
Errol Morris had already made several critically-acclaimed documentaries when he traveled to Texas to interview a psychiatrist, James Grigson, nicknamed 'Dr. Death' because based on virtually no evidence, he always found the accused to be a potential threat to society if he was ever released from prison. Morris encountered the Adams murder case and became intrigued with it, believing it to be a better subject for a documentary than the one he envisioned on Dr. Death (though Grigson has a memorable interview with Randall Adams that the latter recounts for 'The Thin Blue Line.'
What a treasure! Very Highly recommended; gets my highest rating. It's one of the top 25 documentaries of all time, in my opinion. 'The Thin Blue Line' is really an essential film! It will immerse you in the tale of a complete miscarriage of justice.
Update: I've just watched this film again, just tonight, primarily because I wanted my wife to see it. In spite of the fact the documentary was made years ago, it still is spell-binding and convincing. One must remember this came long before the television documentaries and dramatizations of 'Law and Order' and '48 Hours' and the like put us squarely in the midst of a murder investigation. Coupled with a score written by Philip Glass, the movie holds up very, very well and is as fascinating as ever. As I told my wife after the movie ended, 'talk about doing something with your life' as Mr. Morris has done here.
Movie Review: Haunting, Facinating, and True!
Summary: 5 Stars
You can probably think of a handful of movies that seemed to affect your consciousness. Like the way some people say Catcher in the Rye changed their lives. But whether they actually changed you in a real, permanent way remains to be seen.
The Thin Blue Line is a different matter. This movie fundamentally affected at least one person's life in an irreversible way. Without giving away the plot, Randall Dale Adams will certainly never be the same.
The movie deals with the killing of a Texas Trooper and whether or not Texas justice got it right. Morris reveals the facts of the case using strange and haunting reenactments to cover multiple stories and exploring what people said vs. what the physical evidence suggested. He does not push a viewpoint but carefully crafts it, allowing you to accept or reject the various positions. Soon, you are drawn into the central issue of guilt or innocence and the many areas of gray in between.
It's a documentary that plays like a murder mystery, but it is frighteningly true. It's burned as much into my mind because of the number of high-profile cases in Texas where people were either in prison on death row despite being innocent; CBS news magazine 60 Minutes profiles many of them.
But you do not have to have an attitude toward the death penalty to be drawn to The Thin Blue Line. It is entertaining in and of itself. Errol Morris fans will enjoy experiencing one of his earlier works. It also features what I think is one of the better Philip Glass scores.
If you're looking for violence, sex, car chases, or explosions - stay away, you'll hate this. But if you can handle a movie that is more seductive than explosive, this is for you. The final scene -- where a handheld tape recorder sits on a table and plays part of an interview - will chill you to the bone. It makes me shiver even now, and I'm working from memory, not having seen this movie for 15 years or so.
I've been waiting for this to come out; I even sent e-mail to Morris' website to find out when it would be released. This is a special one.
Movie Review: Powerful indictment of the death penalty
Summary: 5 Stars
Not many films can be credited with saving a man's life. One night in 1976, police officer Robert Wood was shot during a routine traffic stop. One of the occupants of the car, Randall Adams, a man with no record, was sentenced to death for the murder. The other occupant, David Harris, went free and remained free despite facts that pointed toward his guilt. Eventually, he was imprisoned for another murder.
The combination of coincidence, complacense, laziness, and dishonesty that conspired against Adams is frightening to behold. Intrigued by the case, documentarian Errol Morris investigated, uncovering numerous lies and misstatements on the part of witnesses, which the police themselves could presumably have uncovered with their greater resources had they made the necessary effort. It is clear from their interviews, however, that the authorities are not interested in revisiting this case; in fact, they have a great deal of professional reputation invested in Adams's conviction.
This is a deeply ethical use of the film medium. By the end of the film, where Harris confesses to the murder that Adams was convicted for, I was stunned by the degree of injustice inflicted on Adams and humbled by a disquieting sense that there must be many similar stories on Death Row. In one sense, Adams is the luckiest man on Earth for having received such an advocate as Morris. How many have been executed with no one to believe their innocence? According to an online interview with Morris, ten years after his release from prison, Adams still had a clean criminal record.
Movie Review: A must-watch for any documentary fan.
Summary: 5 Stars
The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary about Randall Adams, an innocent man on death row for the 1976 murder of a Dallas police officer. The film is directed by Errol Morris and is a groundbreaking success in non-fiction cinema.
I can't believe I waited so long to sit down and watch this doc. Artistically executed and brilliantly paced, it's an absolute compliment not only the documentary genre, but cinema as a whole. Everything from the re-enactments to the strange collective of key players completely blew me away.
It really says something, I think, that the beauty of the film occasionally lulled me from the morose plot, too. The backgrounds behind those being interviewed, the city-scape shots, the close-ups of articles and documents...
Such detail.
I'm gushing, I know, but I'm extremely impressed with what I just saw. And heard! The soundtrack for The Thin Blue Line is conducted masterfully by Philip Glass. If you're not familiar, that's okay, you will be after this. Of course there's a mood about this film, the subject matter demands it, but Glass' contribution is paramount. He enhanced the experience three-fold by creating a foreboding, audible undertow. The music beckons.
This is an outstanding piece of work that most definitely deserves your gracious perusal. Enjoy.
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Movie Review: Interesting film and profound indictment of the legal system
Summary: 5 Stars
Without going into spoilers or repeating the last few other reviewers, what might remain to be said about "The Thin Blue Line" is that it certainly deserves a place in the death penalty debate. Anyone who has watched Morris' later documentary "Dr. Death" can guess his view of the death penalty, but this documentary is the more effective argument against it. Because of the convoluted regard for capital punishment cases, the guilt or innocence of Randall Adams is decided based on what punishment the state of Texas was pursuing at the time. One might naively think that the added stakes of a capital punishment would make Adams harder to convict, but the documentary shows that instead of a more intense scrutiny of the evidence, the police/DA get tunnel vision and the legal machine falls in lockstep. The detectives, judge and (most grotesquely) the forensic psychiatrist seem to expose themselves and their end of the government. I get the impression the Adams isn't telling the whole truth (or Morris isn't showing it), but the theme is laid out beautifully, building from beginning to end. Like "Fog of War," we may pop in the DVD thinking that we already know the story, but the film does not fail to surprise.