"The Thin Blue Line" is a far-reaching documentary filmed in 1998. The documentary reinterprets a case 12 years ago. It overturned the original verdict, made innocent victims remorse, and successfully satirized the law that the United States has always advertised as justice.
This film uses the method of real reproduction. At the beginning, there are scenes that simulate the scene, and the director has found actors who are very similar to him, including the hairstyle and beard. The treatment also lets the audience know that this is just a rendition of the scene.
A very important clue throughout the film is the crime scene. Through the testimony of suspects, police officers and eyewitnesses, the director recreates every detail of the crime scene, from being shot to death by the police, to seeing the witnesses driving by. silhouette of the suspect. For this kind of case, it is impossible to intuitively express the situation at that time only by the oral descriptions of a few people, and the reproduction of the scene of the shooting just makes up for the scenes and plots that could not be recorded at the time of the incident. This made the documentary more convincing, and this shooting technique was widely used in later documentaries.
The last part of the film's interview with the real suspect, David Harris, was performed with a tape recorder. At first, I thought it was deliberately planned by the director. Later, I found out that it was accidental. At that time, the camera malfunctioned and the recording method was used as a last resort. But precisely because the audience can't see Harris' expression, this interview is even more touching.
Fortunately, the case was controversial at the time of trial, so Randall Adams, who was wronged, was converted from the death penalty to life imprisonment. Adams, who spent 12 years in prison, was acquitted in the second year after the filming of the show, and later became a social activist who actively opposed the death penalty until his death in 2010 in poverty and illness. The real murderer, David Harris, later overturned his previous charges at the hearing, refusing to admit to his 1976 homicide. But he ended up being executed for another murder, a second victim that could have been avoided.
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