Review of The Witness (2015) by Nick U — 04 Dec 2016

It baffles me how anyone can think this is a very good documentary. It is so contrived from start to finish; choreographed to the letter, yet utterly disjointed. From Bill writing on his whiteboard (during his "investigation") and scratching his head over some of the newspaper cut outs of some of the people involved.

Bill, as his siblings clearly felt, has issues. He misses his sister but he also needs a lot of love and attention and I hope he gets it. The only interesting thing about this documentary is the media angle; that the New York times wanted to push a particular inaccurate narrative, while other journalists and publiciations may have been too apathetic/frightened to do anything about it; mirroring the apathy/fear wrongly attributed to the victim's neighbours.

That could have been explored more deeply by someone more qualified and less scarred by the subject.