The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Errol Morris has brought true crime documentaries to a high-quality level with this influential, mind-changing and at times quite scary film that offers some compelling evidence of how flawed the American justice system is and how easy it is to convict an innocent man of murder.

"A softcore movie, Dr. Death, a chocolate milkshake, a nosey blonde and "The Carol Burnett Show." Solving this mystery is going to be murder." A film that successfully argued that a man was wrongly convicted for murder by a corrupt justice system in Dallas County, Texas.

REVIEW The film happened almost by accident: Morris became sidetracked while researching another project and began to investigate, on film, the case of Adams and Harris, two strangers whose paths crossed in Dallas one night in November of 1976. What the documentary maker discovered from his own methodical accumulation of clues, rumors, and offhand testimony was an overwhelming case against the young drifter David Harris, who clearly fingered Adams for his own crime. Morris was aided by a convincing and articulate defense presented by Adams himself, whose calm recitation of facts is often more hypnotic than the ominous Philip Glass music score. Director Errol Morris reconstructs the case using old film footage, odd graphic digressions, dramatic reenactments, and interviews with almost everyone involved, including the likely true killer, who tacitly admits his guilt in the final scene. The film is more artfully arranged than most documentaries, and yet is so honest in its pursuit of the truth that it proved instrumental in correcting a miscarriage of justice (after it opened, the case against Harris was reopened, and eventually overturned). The director himself remains (as usual) all but invisible throughout the film, except for his trademark deadpan irreverence (the word blue in the title is colored red, and so forth). A tragic miscarriage of justice would seem an inappropriate source of laughs, but the streak of dark humor underlines the sometimes absurd workings of an imperfect legal system.