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The Thin Blue Line
(****)
In the late 1970's, 16 year old David Harris ran away from his rural Texas homeand made his way to Dallas, Texas. He stole a neighbor's car and just took off. He was a juvenile delinquent by any standard, and he was destined for jail sooner or later.
Meanwhile, Randall Adams and his brother made their way to Dallas to look for work. Adams was amazed that he was able to find a job in only a day when the rest of the city was buried in complaints that work was scarce. That night, the car developed problems, and Adams had to hitchhike. David Harris picked him up.
So begins the 1988 documentary by Errol Morris, and watching it always gives me a chill. Errol Morris has long been a recognized documentarian; his 1999 feature "Mr. Death" has been critically acclaimed, as has about every other documentary he's ever done. To this day, watching the Stephen Hawking biography "A Brief History of Time" is a treat.
The set up for David Harris and Randall Adams ends in the death of a Dallas police officer. Officer Robert Wood and his partner stopped a car for driving with its lights out that evening, and the driver pulled a gun and shot him dead in the street. The question is who?
It was David Harris who stole the car. David Harris stole the gun from a neighbor. But David Harris swore that Randall Adams committed the crime. Harris was released, and Adams was sent to prison.
When watching this, the most obvious question is this; how in hell can those people think Randall Adams did it? The most obvious reason to say Adams did not do it is simple. David Harris is being interviewed from prison for this movie. Guess what he did less than 2 years after the events of this movie took place?
That's right; shortly after the documentary was finished David Harris was killed by the state as punishment for murder.
There's more. Randall Adams has an alibi; Adams also can tell us exactly what was on television when he was supposed to be killing a police officer. Furthermore, Officer Wood's partner tells of a certain hairstyle of the driver. That hairstyle was not the style worn by Adams. Harris wore it.
The film isn't propaganda. All sides are presented, and I simply relay to you my impressions of it. But it strikes me very odd that every witness that says Harris is innocent is completely unreliable.
The documentary itself is impartial and objective. The greatness of it is that it gives us all the evidence, and allows us to draw our own results. But, you gotta admit, it is pretty weird that Harris is rotting in jail for a murder, and Adams was sentenced to die. Maybe someday I'll gain the initiative to look and see if Adams is free.