Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

ligonlaw Errol Morris is a brilliant writer/director. His documentary style is unique and feels almost clinical. He is a master at sorting through factual information and reconstructing events for the viewer.Randall Adams was caught up in the aggressive, eager-to-kill-anyone justice system in Texas. No American state has killed as many people as Texas. In The Thin Blue Line we witness an out-of-control system which puts people to death so aggressively you wonder how many innocent people who have been murdered by prosecutors in Texas. Since the release of Randall Adams, others have been shown to have been innocent, but Mr. Adams' case shed light on the system which prefers to murder its mistakes rather than admit fault.Not every convict has the advantage of a brilliant filmmaker who takes up his case. Here, the flaws of the case were so glaring and obvious that the state was embarrassed. This is a great documentary. It is influential viewing, and it changed the fate of a poor convict who had was nearly put to death on several occasions.When Mr. Morris puts the case together, we see that the state wanted to kill an innocent man, and they would have succeeded if Errol Morris had not investigated the facts.

david_bettoney I am in UK and - to some degree - this film was spoilt for me by the diction of many of the "cast" - how much better this would have been with added subtitles. The overall thrust of the film however is worrying. In another case (and sadly i cannot now trace the reference) a US Judge said - on appeal - "innocence is not enough to overturn a jury verdict".As someone else said there was a desire to convict at almost any price and kill someone for the death of a policeman. This was possibly the attitude in UK in the 1950s and 1960s when miscarriages occurred with the knowledge (if not full understanding) of the police.I believe that in US the DA is an elected official and this may have a lot to do with the failures "it takes an excellent prosecutor to convict an innocent man".Hopefully in UK and US these days things are better. I do not hold my breath though

Jackson Booth-Millard Not to be confused with the British sitcom starring Rowan Atkinson and created by Ben Elton, this is a documentary feature film that featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I knew the title would be something to do with police or the law, and I was more intrigued with what I read about it. From director Errol Morris, this film documents and reconstructs the night of November 29th 1976, when during a traffic stop in Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood was murdered, the Dallas Police Department could only make an arrest after a sixteen year old Vidor, Texas resident gave information that he had told friends he was responsible for the crime. Young David Ray Harris did lead the police to the car driven from the scene of the crime and the 22 Short calibre revolver identified as the murder weapon, and the murderer was identified as twenty eight year old Ohio resident and hitchhiker Randall Dale Adams, who was living in a Dallas motel with his brother at the time. With the series of interviews from all involved in the investigation and re-enactments of the night in question, including witnesses, detectives and from Adams and Harris, and two attorneys make the case that more evidence points towards juvenile Harris then Adams who claims to be innocent and could face death under Texas law. The title of the film comes from a prosecutor comment that the police are "the thin blue line" separating society from "anarchy", also something to do with a poem by Rudyard Kipling and the colour of police uniform and their formation. Before watching this film I read that this film, made twelve years since the crime was committed, received a much more meaningful accolade than winning an Oscar or any other awards, following the release of the film the investigation was reignited and the case taken back to court, and the sentence for Adams was reversed. It is great to hear that a film could be so informative and force a retrial and the law to rethink their decision and verdict on a crime, Adams was indeed proved an innocent man and wrongly accused while Harris was executed with lethal injection in 2004 (for another unrelated crime). This is an engaging enough real life story about a murder and the routines of law enforcement and the legal system, the editing of going from interviews to re-enactments is well put together, and with some provocative stuff you do get a sense of unease sometimes, a terrific documentary. Very good!

Cosmoeticadotcom The film has often been likened to Akira Kurosawa's fictive film- also about a murder, Rashomon. The problem with that analogy is that, in the Kurosawa film, one has no basis by which to know which of the several versions of the killing are correct. In The Thin Blue Line- both from the many tellings and the way Morris presents them, it's obvious that Adams is innocent and Harris is guilty. The only Rashomon like thing is the fact that re-enacted tellings of the shooting all vary, from the two principals, to the cops' claims, to those made by the assorted witnesses who, in actuality, saw nothing. The fact that the many re-enactments are at odds with Morris's clear view that Adams was innocent is a minor failing of the film, and shows Morris was still trying to live up to the dictum that a documentary has to be (or try to be) objective in its presentation of its facts. But, in a case where the evidence is so incontrovertibly one-sided, is such an effort worth it, dramatically or aesthetically? I think not, and films like Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA are proof of my claim. The title of the film comes from the old notion that a thin line of cops (hence the blue) is all that saves civilization from its own worst instincts. The judge who sentenced Adams, when recounting the summation of the DA, tells how he almost teared up at hearing the use of the term. The film, however, turns the title on its side and shows how that same line can be used as a tool for injustice, suppression of evidence, and the oppression of innocents. And it is this perversion of 'justice' that can hasten society's fall far more than the mere absence of that thin blue line.The Thin Blue Line is both a landmark and important film, but those claims are not equivalent to calling it a great film. Arguments can be made, in which case a claim for near greatness may be apt, but not greatness. Compared to the documentaries of Morris's friend and mentor, Werner Herzog, The Thin Blue Line still has a far greater affinity to the sort of straightforward documentaries to be found on PBS shows like Frontline. However, the fact that it did great things- freed an innocent man and held up the so-called justice system to the greater scrutiny it deserves (be it for capital crimes or those as trivial as phony traffic tickets issued to meet monthly quotas)- is indisputable, and that makes it an important film. From a cinematic perspective, the best thing this still rather linear film did was bridge Morris's path from his early quirky documentaries to his later, greater films, like The Fog Of War, which is more clearly in the Herzogian mode. And, for that trajectory, alone, the world of cinema should be grateful.