Randall Adams

David Harris

Gus Rose

Jackie Johnson

Marshall Touchton

Dale Holt

Sam Kittrell

Hootie Nelson

Dennis Johnson

Floyd Jackson

Edith James

Dennis White

Don Metcalfe

Emily Miller

R.L. Miller

Elba Carr

Michael Randell

Melvyn Carson Bruder

Ron Adams

John Dillinger

James Grigson

Mark Mays

Douglas Mulder

Anna Sage

Teresa Turko

Henry M. Wade

Robert Wood

Errol Morris

Amanda Caprio

Michael Cirilla

Adam Goldfine

Derek Horton

Marianne Leone Cooper

Michael Nicoll

Phyllis Rodgers

Ron Thornhill

Jack Leahy

Samuel Lehmer

Brad Fuller

Mark Lipson

Philip Glass

Robert Chappell

Paul Barnes

Stefan Czapsky

Theo Mayes

Jaime Kibben

Jeff Kliment

Ted Bafaloukos

Matt Vogel

Van Allen James

John Geisler

Lindsay Law

Lester Cohen

Shelley Houis

Steven Stoke

Newton Thomas Sigel

Crime

Documentary

The Thin Blue Line

American Playhouse

Third Floor Productions

United States of America

Charles Tatum

In November 1976 in Dallas, Texas, Police Officer Robert Wood was shot and killed while making an otherwise routine traffic stop. One man was arrested and sentenced to death for the crime, based on the testimony of a sixteen year old acquaintance. These basic facts are covered in one of the most brilliant films to come out of the 1980's. Randall Adams was no drifter. He was moving from Ohio and was staying in Dallas with his brother. He found a good job, and planned on living there a while. Then he met David Harris, a punk from a Klan-infested small town in southern Texas. The officer is murdered, and Harris blames Adams, even though Harris gloated about shooting the young cop to his friends. Adams was railroaded into prison while Harris embarked on a petty crime spree. He continued his misdemeanor ways until he actually killed a man during a botched kidnapping. Now Harris was in jail, and Adams was still appealing his conviction. Witnesses came forward claiming to have seen Adams shoot Wood, yet none of them have a gleam of credibility. Finally, Adams gets some decent lawyers, who begin working to get him out. He is granted an appeal by the U.S. Supreme Court, but as of the making of the film, he was still serving life in prison. A little research shows what happened to Randall Adams.

Errol Morris goes where few documentary makers go. He films convincing reenactments of the crime. These are not "Unsolved Mysteries"-type reenactments, Morris has a real director's eye, and gives the audience every detail needed- from a tossed milkshake to the number of people spotted in the killer's car. Philip Glass adds a haunting musical score that gets under your skin and hypnotizes you. The convict Adams is a sincere man, and the film makers are obviously rooting for his cause. Harris is an ignorant punk, enjoying playing games with people's lives. If the Dallas County prosecutors had done their job, Harris would not have committed his second murder: food for thought. Harris' final interview, done on audio cassette, is chilling, and will make a believer of anyone who otherwise thought "this could never happen to me." The three "witnesses" to the slaying are a joke, two in it for the reward, and a salesman who boasts of his photographic memory but cannot recall if Wood's patrol car was in front of or behind Harris' stolen vehicle. "The Thin Blue Line" is more than talking heads, this is a searing story that puts to shame any fiction that tries to cover the same ground. For this kind of thing to happen to an innocent man, it is also very scary.

English

Three Reasons: The Thin Blue Line

The Thin Blue Line (1988)