Rating: NR
Genre:
Culture & Society
Release Date: 07/26/2005
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Sound: DDS2.0
Run Time: 102 min
Distributor/Studio: MGM
Not many filmmakers can claim to have freed a convicted murderer from jail, but
Errol Morris accomplished that feat with his stunning
documentary about
Randall Dale Adams.
Morris, whose brilliant previous features
Vernon, Florida and
Gates of Heaven had focused on less substantial subjects, learned of
Adams' plight when the director was in Texas in preparation for a film about a psychiatrist who testified in murder trials. In November 1976, after his car broke down on a road outside Dallas,
Adams had accepted a ride from a stranger,
David Harris.
Harris was driving a stolen car, and when Dallas police officer
Robert Wood pulled the two men over to check on the vehicle,
Harris shot and killed
Wood. A jury believed that
Adams was the killer, thanks to the perjured testimony of
Harris and the misleading accounts of two witnesses. A story about
Adams on
60 Minutes helped to bring public attention to the case, but it was
Morris' film, which contained extensive interview material with both
Adams and
Harris as well as stylized reenactments of the crime, that clinched the case for
Adams' innocence. He was set free on March 15, 1988. Although
Morris' film made many critics' top ten lists, it was unaccountably not nominated for an Academy award, raising doubts about the credibility of the Motion Picture Academy's nominating process in this category.
~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
As good as his previous two films were (
Vernon, Florida and
Gates of Heaven), director
Errol Morris caught a lot of people, including his fans, by surprise with
The Thin Blue Line.
Morris had shown affection for quirky people in
Vernon and
Gates, both of them filmed in an unadorned style. But his third feature displayed not only a seriousness of purpose but also proved to be a technical coming-out party for him. He had developed a camera system which allowed him to talk with his subjects while they looked directly into the lens, connecting them much more strongly to the viewer. That was crucial here, because
The Thin Blue Line is, in part, about the reliability of two men:
Adams, the accused killer, and
David Harris, the real killer.
Morris also made the bold decision not only to stage a reenactment of the crime, but to play it over and over from different angles. In this way, he demonstrated how witnesses to the crime might have misinterpreted what they thought they saw; in essence, the viewer becomes a football referee reviewing the videotape of a disputed play from several different angles to render a fair judgment. And this is one
documentary where the composer made a significant contribution;
Philip Glass' hypnotic score reinforces the sense of sifting and re-sifting the evidence to get at the truth.
~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
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