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Bookmark this pageThe Thin Blue Line (1988)
Director: Errol Morris
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Documentarist-extraordinary Morris' original and delightfully bizarre slice of investigative film-journalism attempts, successfully, to set the record straight about one Randall Adams, imprisoned in 1976 for the murder of a Dallas cop. It is also a philosophical thesis on problems of knowledge and truth, which uses highly stylised dramatic reconstructions of the crime to offer a multitude of perspectives on what really happened, and a darkly comic, nightmarish study in self-delusion and deception. The legal figures and witnesses Morris interviews are transparently weird, shifty, obsessive and unreliable. Indeed, the movie - immaculately structured, beautifully shot, sensitively scored by Philip Glass - is a poignant and hilarious essay on oddball America. Morris' skill in suggesting that Adams' original trial involved at best a miscarriage of justice, at worst corruption, ensures that the audience becomes a surrogate jury. The film provokes sadness, anger, relief, admiration, and wonder; enjoy it, and worry.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Errol Morris
Producer: Mark Lipson
Cast: Randall Adams, David Harris, Edith James, Dennis White, Don Metcalfe full cast
Genre(s): Documentaries
Duration: 101 mins
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