The Thin Blue Line

Actually, the story of how this picture came about may be better than the actual picture; at least IT has an ending. Fact is, the filmmaker (I think his name is Morris) set out to make a documentary about a tough Texas D.A. (at least I think I read this somewhere, or else I'm making it up by accident) who always gets convictions or something like that. In any event, during the course of his research he stumbles upon the case of Randall Adams, a man who was sent to prison (for life, I think) despite a very botched investigation and trial, during the course of which ANOTHER guy all but confesses to the crime. Morris is intrigued by this, and ends up making a documentary (more-or-less) about this case. As a result, the case gets national attention, is re-opened, and, the D.A.'s office having declined to re-try Adams, he goes free, much to the happiness of family and friends. Now that's interesting.

Fact is it is never really determined who shot the cop, though naturally Adams denies it and the film itself is rife with innuendo, in the form of statements made by the guy who was with Adams that night and is also in prison. (He never comes right out and says he did it, but he sure implies it.) The picture itself is fascinating in a clinical sort of way. Morris intersperses interviews with the actual participants with “reenactments” of the events; though these latter remind me of those high school documentaries in which everything was shown as a series of shadows, which always led me to believe (probably correctly) that the makers of those films didn't have the money to actually stage the events they were supposed to be reporting on. But that's how this goes, and Morris is a pretty skillful director, to be able to hold our attention through these somewhat static stagings and the interviews with what turns out to be a rather pathetic group of people. It all comes across as a latter day American Rashomon, and, in the end, we STILL aren't sure what happened. I suppose that's truthful, but you kind of get the feeling that you got gypped. At the film's end, Adams is still in jail (the reopening etc. not taking place until after the film ends), and nothing has been resolved to anybody's satisfaction. The only thing that comes through clearly (and maybe this is really the point) is how warped the idea of "justice" can get in certain situations. Guilty or not, it's hard to believe that Adams got anything like a fair shake, or that anyone with a brain actually looked back at the big picture enough to realize that something was wrong here. (Well, maybe Adams' lawyer is the one exception.) At the same time, reflecting later upon the fact that ultimately Adams did go free, one cannot help be struck by the realization that the possibility remains that a cop-killer has been set free. That's the real story here, the power of the media and the propagandist. And, as has often been said, everybody in prison is innocent, and they’ll tell anybody who will listen.