The Thin Blue Line

This Errol Morris documentary is considered a classic documentary, but my impressions are that the Phillip Glass soundtrack, as well as the cheesy reenactments are over the top and sully the journalistic nature of what a documentary is supposed to achieve. The closeups of various items - a newspaper article, a clock, and the too-loud Glass soundtrack overlaying the actual participants’ dialogue makes for a frustrating viewing experience - maddening, actually. For example, what do we gain by watching the same b-movie the participants watched during the night in question? An insight into their psychology? I am really interested in the story, but the pretentious soundtrack and the cinematography ruin this for me.

Here’s the synopsis from the Wikipedia article:

The film concerns the November 28, 1976 murder of Dallas police officer, Robert W. Wood, during a traffic stop. The Dallas Police Department was unable to make an arrest until they learned of information given by a 16-year-old resident of Vidor, Texas who had told friends that he was responsible for the crime.[3] The juvenile, David Ray Harris, led police to the car driven from the scene of the crime, as well as a .22 caliber revolver he identified as the murder weapon. He subsequently identified 28-year-old Ohio resident Randall Dale Adams as the murderer.

Adams had been living in a motel in Dallas with his brother. The film presents a series of interviews about the investigation and reenactments of the shooting, based on the testimony and recollections of Adams, Harris, and various witnesses and detectives. Two attorneys who represented Adams at the trial where he was convicted of capital murder also appear: they suggest that Adams was charged with the crime despite the better evidence against Harris because, as Harris was a juvenile, Adams alone of the two could be sentenced to death under Texas law.

The film's title comes from the prosecutor's comment during his closing argument that the police are the "thin blue line" separating society from anarchy. This is a re-working of a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem Tommy in which he describes British soldiers (nicknamed "Tommy Atkins") as the "thin red line", from the color of their uniforms and their formation.

This documentary’s investigation showed that five witnesses committed perjury and, as a result, overturned Adams’s conviction. I do not argue that this is not an important movie, but its style is an unfortunate, pretentious precedent for films to come. On the other hand, it’s investigation and quest for truth set an even more important precedent - suffice it to say that I cannot argue with the importance of this movie, but from a viewer’s perspective, it falls short for me.