The Thin Blue Line is largely considered to be one of the greatest crime documentaries ever made. The documentary follows a man named Randall Adams who, after his car broke down on a Texan highway, was picked up by a teenage runaway named David Harris. The two spent late-seventies drug, alcohol, and drive-in theatre filled day together until that night; when Harris and Adams were pulled over by two police officers, it was during the pullover that one of the officers was fatally shot to death by Harris. In the following court case Randall Adams, a non-texan mid-twenty year old, was charged and found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. The documentary by filmmaker Errol Morris serves as a private investigation into the flimsy evidence, pressured police department, conflicting testimonies, and political corruption that led to the false conviction. Made twelve years into Adams sentence, the evidence gathered in the documentary created cause for an evidentiary hearing which led to Adams eventual acquittal.

While The Thin Blue Line’s story is fascinating the things that make this documentary great have more to do with the actual filmmaking. The trait the immediately drew me into the film was the great score, that creates a genuine tension to the story. The palatable music feels closer to a Giallo (specifically The Fifth Cord) rather the standard, stock music feeling, documentary music. The meat of the film is, of course, the interviews. Nearly every person involved in the trial was interviewed; The judge, the public defender, witnesses, Randall Adams, and most intriguing David Harris. Harris is a welcome addition to him not only having falsely testified against Adams but also, sixteen years after the films debut, being lethally injected for a different crime. The interviews with Adams have a strong melancholy over them, due to him being on death row at the time. Adams and Harris’s interviews are the most interesting part of the film due to their strong contrast. Adams sounds like he has lost all faith in the world, while Harris has only the faintest hint of emotion. The director, Errol Morris, uses a method we were taught when doing interviews of our own in class; to just let the subjects keep talking without interrupting them, it’s through this that Morris really shows the audience how flimsy the testimonies were.

In terms of the actual technical side of the filmmaking, The Thin Blue Line is not the most sophisticated work. None of the interviews have eye-lights which, to be fair, could be an artistic attempt to darken the frame and subjects. I could also be and age thing, as the documentary is thirty-one years old currently. The last section to cover are the re-enactments, which to the directors credit have actual style and interesting visual direction. They closely resemble a low budget dark cop vs crim drama (kind of like Thunder Road or Cops vs. Thugs). This is a refreshing change due to the innumerable amounts of garbage reenactments in modern or just general low-effort documentaries.

Overall I would highly recommend The Thin Blue Line due to the combination of extremely talented filmmaking, great interviews, and interesting crime story. This documentary legitimately stands as one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.