The Thin Blue Line
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Movie Reviews of The Thin Blue Line
Movie Review: Solid and Engaging...
Summary: 4 Stars
Being a huge documentary fan... I'm hesitant to admit that I waited so long to finally see The Thin Blue Line. I don't know why it took me so long, but I'm glad that I finally watched it... I thought it was amazing. Errol Morris truly shows why he's one of the most respected Documentary filmmakers of all time... all of his films have this polish and style to them that separates his documentaries from the rest. He has a way of doing reenactments in a non-cheesy and totally believable way. If I hear a documentary relies on a lot of reenactments, I usually cringe; but when I hear that for an Errol Morris documentary I get excited... The Think Blue Line is a perfect illustration of this.
The movie itself is an exceptionally interesting and thoroughly captivating story about the murder of a police officer and the ensuing investigation into it. What follows is corruption and a perfect example of when our legal system flat out fails to do its job. Very nicely done as expected... I fully recommend seeing this if you haven't already. 4/5 stars.
Movie Review: Truth?
Summary: 4 Stars
The Thin Blue Line- 1988- ****
A stunning documentary by Errol Morris which was absurdly written off as "pseudo-journalism," and "overly-subjective," by the critics at the time. Morris makes no pretense of being "objective," with his topic; in fact, the actual topic of the film is subjectivity. A man is convicted for murder in Texas on extremely thin evidence but the opaque wheels of justice simply crank him into death row without a second thought. Morris worked as an investigative journalist in uncovering the man's innocence, made the film, and eventually got his conviction overturned because of its persuasiveness. Scenes of the crime are reconstructed and dramatized by Morris to fill in the point of view of the interviewee (not to demonstrate the truth), and the film gradually and compellingly puts together the missing fragments of the case, and turns truth on its backside. This is a brilliant documentary, and I'm not employing hyperbole when I say it is the In Cold Blood of the cinematic form.
Movie Review: Thin Blue Line
Summary: 4 Stars
Riveting - keep in mind that it is a documentary and not intended to be a fiction action thriller - the tape recording at the end gave me chillsMovie Review: Groundbreaking portrait of stupidity
Summary: 3 Stars
Way ahead of its time--although by no means the first documentary made in the US (that honor belongs to Nanook of the North, made in the 1920s)--this had huge chunks of impact on cop show TV, reality TV, talk show TV, and documentary films as well. Made in 1988, this depicts the slaying of a Texas police officer by one of two men in a car, pulled over in 1976 at night on a Texas highway.
While this is unquestionably a piece of filmmaking that is like nothing else before it, it's frankly pretty tough to watch--not because of the violence (what's portrayed is not really gruesome or severe), but because of the massive amount of total stupidity and callousness on display. It's just not fun to watch. With the exception of three lawyers--the woman defense attorney, and the two male defense attorneys--everyone else, bar none, comes off as either stupid, callous, ignorant, devious, defensive, or just plain...well, stupid. Dumb. This does not exclude a high ranking Texas court official.
It's chilling to think that law enforcement and the justice system are so full of idiots, but there's no getting around it. They are. To be fair, one law enforcement official, from Vidor, Texas, does present himself with some intelligence and that was refreshing, because no one else does.
Just because a documentary is the truth does not mean it should not be entertaining. Four great examples of the latter are "Supersize Me", "What the Bleep Do We Know?" (disgused as a feature film, but really a documentary), "Roger and Me", and "The Corporation". All of these reveal things we didn't know before and a number of them--especially in "The Corporation"--are absolutely enraging. But "The Thin Blue Line" does not enrage or stimulate or provoke thought.
What it does do is to depress the viewer with the monumnentally massive degree of idiocy present in the U.S. system of justice. No doubt that is the intent, so, fine, it succeeds at what it intends to do. But a whole lot of it is, frankly, boring. Very dull. Tedious.
The Philip Glass score does help, especially when there are scenes or sections that reveal tragic events. This is a great match of sound and image. But Morris' overly cute David Lynch-inspired "object details" don't help at all in relieving the tedium; in fact, they increase it. He cuts from yet another monotone-droning person talking on and on about some detail of the crime to another re-enactment of the crime, over and over. The crime is re-enacted not less than about seven times, probably more, in the course of the film. This itself gets pretty tiring.
This is basically for huge fans of Errol Morris or of documentaries. Or both. For a far superior documentary with a crime basis, see "Brother's Keeper" made by Jay Berliner, about five brothers living in poverty, in their 50s, in a small upstate New York village. THAT is a truly compelling crime-based documentary. This one, "The Thin Blue Line", is probably the grand-daddy of contemporary U.S. crime documentaries, but is not really compelling.
Groundbreaking? Yes. Interesting? No.
Movie Review: great documentary, average transfer
Summary: 3 Stars
no doubt this is a great documentary, and i agree with the other reviews, but MGM did yet another average print and packaging job. the print looks no different than the vhs version. no booklet inside. no commentaries. forth, i wish they would of put the follow-up half-hour documentary on this dvd. errol morris talks about how this originally was suppose to be a documentary on "doctor death", but after interviewing david harris, he realized randal adams was innocent. it also showed randal adams getting released from prison, more interviews with him and a clip of him being on johnny carson. that would of been a perfect combination for this package. instead, we get a short on the nature of evil, which isn't bad at all. this dvd package could of been a lot, lot better.