Click here to copy URL

The Thin Blue Line

1988

Errol Morris

Documentary

7.4

1,447

Documentary "The Thin Blue Line" is the fascinating, controversial true story of the arrest and conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas policeman in 1976. Billed as "the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder," the film is credited with overturning the conviction of Randall Dale Adams for the murder of Dallas police officer Robert Wood, a crime for which Adams was sentenced to death. With its use of expressionistic ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"Morris's film is both an investigation of the murder and a nightmarish meditation on the difference between truth and fiction"	POS
United States	Desson Thomson The Washington Post	"'Thin Blue Line' shouldn't be missed. It's more than fact, and more than fiction."	POS
United States	Kevin Thomas Los Angeles Times	"Taxing, fascinating (...) No mystery novelist could come up with richer characters or a more convoluted plot"	POS
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"It's riveting and terrifying. Highly recommended testimony to the dangers of shoddy investigations (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"The results, while compelling, provide an object lesson in the dangers of being influenced by Werner Herzog; the larger considerations and film noir overtones detract too much from the facts of the case"	NEU
United States	Variety	"It employs strikingly original formal devices to pull together diverse interviews, filmclips, photo collages and recreations of the crime from many points of view"	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The result is a movie that is documentary and drama, investigation and reverie (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.