The Thin Blue Line

Should be required watching for all those "law and order" types in favor of capital punishment.

this is a must see documentary! investigative reporting at its best! this story assisted in setting Randall Adams, an innocent man, free. I can't help but think that Errol Morris also wanted to point out how our system has become a big game of wins and losses at any and all expense. unfortunately we have forgotten this lesson all too soon. speaking from experience. Get this documentary and beware. It could happen to you too!

Stylistically incredible film. At the end of the film I was shocked but not surprised that things can get so twisted. The obviously guilty man is set free while the innocent man gets punished. By the way, the score by Philip Glass was the first taste I had of his music. I was hooked.

Excellent. Best documentary I have seen. Very effective way of doing all the interviews just by getting comments without interviewer present asking questions. Don't have to get the interviewer's spin through the questions on the topic. Just the facts, ma'am.

Errol Morris' documentary works are unique in that one often remembers the story telling and film making techniques employed as much as the subjects being examined. Here, for example, there's a moody Philip Glass score, artful slow-motion dramatizations of witness testimony, and- in what has evolved into a typical Morris trademark- inserts of props and old movie clips to underscore what interview subjects are saying. In one scene, for instance, we see a haunting image of a swinging watch on the end of a chain when one of the subjects discusses how the female police officer on the scene was ultimately hypnotized to help her recall details of the crime. To his credit, however, Mr. Morris never quite lets his showmanship, as memorable as it can often be, upstage the subject at hand. As a result, "The Thin Blue Line" ultimately resulted in an innocent man being set free.

Unfortunately, viewers won't learn that fact from this DVD, which includes just the movie and no further information about the wheels that were set in motion after the film was released. The only "extra" here is a 27-minute episode of Mr. Morris' "First Person" TV interview program, which features an interview with a man who is an expert on "extreme evil". The interview subject spends the show enthusiastically talking about lovely folks like the Boston Strangler and Hitler, then- in the best moment of the show- suddenly gets tongue tied and is at a loss for words when Morris asks him, "Now, what do you think there is about you that makes you so interested in heinous crimes and truly evil acts?" It's a hoot.

In any event, the TV episode is an interesting little addition to the DVD, and it does tie in somewhat to the theme of "The Thin Blue Line", but I would have preferred some specific, after-the-fact information about the movie itself rather than a sample of Mr. Morris' TV show.

Still, aficionados of true-crime stories and documentary film making shouldn't hesitate to pick up this DVD. More than fifteen years after the fact (yes, it's already been that long since this movie was in theaters), "The Thin Blue Line" remains powerful and engrossing, making you truly care about both the specific case in question and the larger criminal justice issues the case illuminates.