Review of The Thin Blue Line (1988) by Sean F — 17 Aug 2004

In 1989, the year after Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" was released, Randall Adams was released from prison after serving 12 years of a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit.

That's what the documentary got right. What it missed the boat on was the presentation of its subject. It's a poorly made movie on an important subject that, fortunately, had some very positive results.

On Thanksgiving weekend in 1976, Dallas police officer Robert Wood was brutally gunned down while making a routine traffic stop. A year later Randall Adams was on death row (later commuted to life) for the murder.

It's a known fact now that Adams was innocent. Was, in fact, nowhere near the scene. The crime was actually committed by David Harris. We know this because he confesses to Morris in the film. Adams was railroaded into prison by a corrupt system that wanted somebody to pay for the crime.

All of this could have been presented in a compelling manner. Unfortunately, the information seems to have come from a "let's see what sticks" attitude. One of the mistakes the movie makes is its use of dramatic re-enactments.

I'm not a fan of them in documentaries. It's makes me feel like I'm watching "America's Most Wanted". It's a small quibble, I know, and it wouldn't have been that bad if Morris didn't show us the same re-enactment over and over and over and .

. . . I'm not kidding - it was bad. And then there are the pointless shots of pointless objects designed to underline the story by showing us, I guess, that this is what a clock looks like. In case we were wondering.

While discussing the confession Adams refused to sign, we get an unnecessary re-enactment of someone typing the confession. Then a shot of the person typing a row of "X"s at the bottom of the confession.

Then a shot of the "X" key on the typewriter. Later in the movie is another shot of the key for no reason whatsoever. Such filler abounds throughout the movie. There's an unnecessary shot of a chocolate shake flying through the air .

. . again. There's a shot of a blue Vega's trunk . . . again. We even know at this point Harris wasn't driving a Vega. How many times do we have to see a gun stick out of the car window and fire five shots? And why do we have to see so much of the softcore drive-in movie that Adams and Harris attended on the night of the murder? If I didn't know better I'd think Morris got entranced by the half-naked actress on the screen and forgot the movie he was trying to make.

Good heavens, if he had taken out every unnecessary or superfluous shot, he may have been able to cut an hour out of the movie. The film got an innocent man out of prison, and, if nothing else, I appreciate that about it.

But don't mistake good results or intentions for a good movie.