The Thin Blue Line

Murder is tradition in Texas. So is the death penalty. This is the stuff of trivial Hollywood movies, but in the hands of Errol Morris its fodder for one of the best law and order tales ever told. In this enthralling story about a man convicted of murdering a policeman on dubious evidence, we meet the main characters through a series of interviews. Technically a documentary, this film ranks with the best of crime noir movies. Watching it made me think of James Ellroy's Los Angeles or Dennis Lehane's Boston, where the setting is the strongest character. Only this is Texas and Morris lets his characters, the interview subjects, tell you that. You hear Texas in their accents, but you also hear them describe what it's like to live in Texas from their point of view. The details of their stories are far more complicated than most screenplays can account for. Blue Line will tackle such topics as the differences in racial prejudices between different towns and neighborhoods in and around Texas, as well as the economic factors and the poverty that these characters live in. I feel like every crime movie I've seen since 1988 used this film to find its focus. Most failed.

This film led to the vindication and freeing of the man convicted for the murder after staying in jail for ten years, but the film is not presented as a mountain of evidence trying to persuade you one way or the other. Rather, the people involved in the incident explain to you how and why things unfolded as they did and through this you get better characterization than most Academy Award winning films. Morris also brings you to the scene of the crime, where you watch the dramatization of a policeman shot on the side of a road after a routine traffic stop. Milkshakes are thrown, witnesses drive by in the night and shots are fired. We go back to this scene over and over and while it seemed excessive, it works. In the end, with Philip Glass' urgent score running through my head I walk away from the film just wondering what happened on that dark Texas road 32 years ago.

Morris graduated from The Thin Blue Line to make The Fog Of War, an analysis of lessons learned by Robert McNamara. This film is even more chilling and does an even better job of drawing you in (enough so that I've watched it or parts of it at least 10 times) than Thin Blue Line, but I'll write about that another time.