Delayed Reaction: The Thin Blue Line

The Pitch: So, did this guy actually kill a cop?

By my understanding, this is the documentary that defined the now familiar structure of true-crime documentaries. I haven't done enough digging to outright verify this, but it sure sounds believable. It came out in 1988 and reminds me of all the Dateline and 48 Hour Mysteries I've seen from the 90s and beyond. It's a pretty simple movie. It's just a bunch of interviews from different witnesses about what happened on the night that a cop was killed. The stories conflict in different ways and a few people are exposed as liars or, at the very least, exaggerators. It's impressive that this played a part in getting Randall Dale Adams out of prison for murder. I'd have more to say about it, but really, the remarkable thing about it isn't the content as much as the context, and I haven't studied its influence enough to do it justice.

I'm sure Burger King wasn't happy about how much it was featured in the film though...Then again, I do kind of want Burger King now.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend