The Thin Blue Line

A man who was sentenced to die for a crime he most likely didn't commit.

I searched all over and couldn't find a trailer for this one.

Very interesting stuff. Building the case as you build the movie. It's kind of like Capturing the Friedmens that way. You're not entirely sure what to believe. You can see a guy in orange and one not in orange, but you still feel like that can't be the whole story. That can't be the end. Also, even though as you watch you begin to form your own story as to what happened, I still felt, that the filmmakers did an okay job showing both sides. Which is a weird thing to do when you're basically trying to argue for this dude's innocence.

The tone of this was really kind of cool. It was kind of dark and kind of quiet. It felt like a doc version of Blade Runner or the original Terminator. They used these reenactments of the scene of the crime from different angles and different Roshomon-esque ways of how it could have gone down. But it kept from being like a trutv/Court tv sort of documentary with how they used and reused the same scenes. I think it worked. As did other people. This is a very popular, pretty famous documentary.

Funnily enough, I feel like if you were to make this movie now, they'd overthink everything. You'd try to make it too stylistic and polished, but the simplicity of this is what made the tone of it work. Something like the reveal of the make and model of car would have been done with too many effects. So, in that way, the dated look of the whole thing really worked for it.

Something that could have helped this, and yes I know, this is a very famously "good" doc, but something that could have helped it would have been lower thirds. There were so many people talking back and forth, throwing names around. I know this wasn't made before the whole idea of compositing names over video on a documentary. I've been watching The Up Series. I know around what time they started doing that. So It could have definitely be strengthened in that way. Regardless, though, the storytelling was there, so it was okay.

One more thing I wish, where I think it would have a bigger impact, is if you couldn't tell who was already in prison. There are very few designers who would jump at making a bright orange collared shirt or jumper. So you know some of the end, which sucked, but was also sort of gratifying because it was kind of a relief to know that everything wasn't a disaster.

Also, the accents where just hilarious.