Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" documents the 1976 murder of Dallas police officer Robert Wood. David Harris, a young drifter, was initially arrested for the crime, but later testified that another man, Randall Adams, was actually responsible for the murder. Adams claimed to know nothing about the murder. Local authorities believed Harris, however, and Adams was eventually charged and given the death sentence. As the film begins, Adams has been in jail for 11 years, and Harris is serving time for an unrelated crime.
Using dramatic reconstructions and many eye-witness testimonies, Morris' documentary dives headlong into the case. It's a "Rashomon" styled parade of conflicting testimonies and overlapping subjective viewpoints, the truth of the murder murky and shapeless, until things begin to focus. When the crime begins to coalesce, a pitiful picture begins to take shape: rampant police corruption led to Adams being falsely convicted, Harris emerges as a juvenile psychopath, police incompetence is exposed, scapegoats are exonerated, corroborating evidence and testimonies are undermined, the moral character of lawyers, psychiatrists, law enforcement officers and expert witnesses is called into question, and even the testimonies of regular civilians are seen to be wholly biased, easily swayed by personal desires for money and fame. The film's point: trust no one, test the gods, and keep probing until you find the truth.
"The Thin Blue Line" was well received when it released in the late 1980s, but it would be a number of years before its influence on the documentary genre would become apparent. Morris' dramatic reconstructions of the crime – filmed in nightmarish, noirish hues and resemblant of a David Lynch film - talking heads, and overall aesthetic/approach would give rise to an entire documentary industry, influencing countless TV crime docs, court TV stations and investigative programmes. Adding weight to Morris' visuals is a mounting, powerful score by Philip Glass, which pulls portentously down on the picture like a hang man's noose.
Still, for a film purporting to "search for the truth", "The Thin Blue Line" is at times a thin work. Suspicious holes in Adams' memory are skirted over, and though the film places human faces on those ignored men and women who live on the fringes of society, either economically or psychologically, too little effort is put into delving into the lives of these characters. Subsequent writing on Harris (who has since been executed), for example, has demonstrated that he too was a victim, alcoholic and suicidal at the mere age of 11, and condemned to live with a violently abusive family. Also missing from the film is any trace of homosexuality, any trace of the psycho-sexual confusion these two men were experiencing and any understanding how their marginalization may have affected their sexuality. Indeed, psychopaths (both sexes tend to find psychopaths notoriously charming and sexy) are disproportionately bisexual, and many journalists and writers have since claimed that a bisexual or sexually confused Harris rejected Adams' sexual advances on the night of the murder, and that Adams is himself homosexual. But such avenues aren't explored in the film, nor are there any hints that Adams' sexuality played a role in the police convicting him (Texas was, and still is, renowned for its "Gay Persecution Laws").
Still, "The Thin Blue Line" is primarily interested in police corruption, and along these lines it works well. Morris makes it clear that the police failed to follow up on certain evidence merely because such evidence conflicted with the outcome they wanted to achieve. In other words, the police, like all human beings, engage in rationalizations, and tend to work backwards from their preconceived notions or expectations. Today, experts estimate that about ten thousand people in the US are wrongfully convicted of serious crimes each year (which is roughly between 5 and 14 percent of all convictions). Sixty four percent of the people exonerated of serious crimes had been misidentified (usually erroneous cross-racial identifications), fifteen percent had false confessions forced out of them, and 44 percent were subject to prosecution witnesses committing perjury. For a similar, and arguably better documentary covering this same topic, see "Murder on a Sunday Morning".
8/10 – Though an influential and haunting documentary, time and countless imitators have rendered "The Thin Blue Line" somewhat slow and repetitive. Worth one viewing.
Using dramatic reconstructions and many eye-witness testimonies, Morris' documentary dives headlong into the case. It's a "Rashomon" styled parade of conflicting testimonies and overlapping subjective viewpoints, the truth of the murder murky and shapeless, until things begin to focus. When the crime begins to coalesce, a pitiful picture begins to take shape: rampant police corruption led to Adams being falsely convicted, Harris emerges as a juvenile psychopath, police incompetence is exposed, scapegoats are exonerated, corroborating evidence and testimonies are undermined, the moral character of lawyers, psychiatrists, law enforcement officers and expert witnesses is called into question, and even the testimonies of regular civilians are seen to be wholly biased, easily swayed by personal desires for money and fame. The film's point: trust no one, test the gods, and keep probing until you find the truth.
"The Thin Blue Line" was well received when it released in the late 1980s, but it would be a number of years before its influence on the documentary genre would become apparent. Morris' dramatic reconstructions of the crime – filmed in nightmarish, noirish hues and resemblant of a David Lynch film - talking heads, and overall aesthetic/approach would give rise to an entire documentary industry, influencing countless TV crime docs, court TV stations and investigative programmes. Adding weight to Morris' visuals is a mounting, powerful score by Philip Glass, which pulls portentously down on the picture like a hang man's noose.
Still, for a film purporting to "search for the truth", "The Thin Blue Line" is at times a thin work. Suspicious holes in Adams' memory are skirted over, and though the film places human faces on those ignored men and women who live on the fringes of society, either economically or psychologically, too little effort is put into delving into the lives of these characters. Subsequent writing on Harris (who has since been executed), for example, has demonstrated that he too was a victim, alcoholic and suicidal at the mere age of 11, and condemned to live with a violently abusive family. Also missing from the film is any trace of homosexuality, any trace of the psycho-sexual confusion these two men were experiencing and any understanding how their marginalization may have affected their sexuality. Indeed, psychopaths (both sexes tend to find psychopaths notoriously charming and sexy) are disproportionately bisexual, and many journalists and writers have since claimed that a bisexual or sexually confused Harris rejected Adams' sexual advances on the night of the murder, and that Adams is himself homosexual. But such avenues aren't explored in the film, nor are there any hints that Adams' sexuality played a role in the police convicting him (Texas was, and still is, renowned for its "Gay Persecution Laws").
Still, "The Thin Blue Line" is primarily interested in police corruption, and along these lines it works well. Morris makes it clear that the police failed to follow up on certain evidence merely because such evidence conflicted with the outcome they wanted to achieve. In other words, the police, like all human beings, engage in rationalizations, and tend to work backwards from their preconceived notions or expectations. Today, experts estimate that about ten thousand people in the US are wrongfully convicted of serious crimes each year (which is roughly between 5 and 14 percent of all convictions). Sixty four percent of the people exonerated of serious crimes had been misidentified (usually erroneous cross-racial identifications), fifteen percent had false confessions forced out of them, and 44 percent were subject to prosecution witnesses committing perjury. For a similar, and arguably better documentary covering this same topic, see "Murder on a Sunday Morning".
8/10 – Though an influential and haunting documentary, time and countless imitators have rendered "The Thin Blue Line" somewhat slow and repetitive. Worth one viewing.