3. The Thin Blue Line
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL5A4D0G4g It would be easy to argue that Errol Morris' superb 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line is the best documentary ever made, because which others have directly given someone their life back? The film depicts the travails of a man, Randall Dale Adams, who was wrongly accused of murdering a Texan police officer and ended up being sentenced to death for it. Through a number of eyewitness testimonies, we come to see how easily the case against him falls apart, specifically as it becomes clear that some witnesses were lying, with their own agendas in place. Morris' film also marks the birth of the "reconstruction" - a movie-style re-enactment of a crime - that has become so popular in true crime TV shows throughout the years, and helps to construe the case that, indeed, Adams was innocent. There was so much publicity surrounding the film that, in the end, Adams was granted a retrial and acquitted, getting his life back. Though Adams' sentence had already been commuted to life imprisonment several years before, how many films can say that they freed someone from wrongful incarceration?
Shaun Munro
Contributor
Frequently sleep-deprived film addict and video game obsessive who spends more time than is healthy in darkened London screening rooms. Follow his twitter on @ShaunMunroFilm or e-mail him at shaneo632 [at] gmail.com.
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