The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Written and directed by Errol Morris

Gripping documentary about the railroading of Randall Adams for a 1976 cop killing actually committed by a hitchiker he happened to pick up one night, David Harris. The Thin Blue Line takes the novel approach of employing tight close-ups and re-enactments as well as actual footage and interviews to round out its argument, and in the film's most amazing moment, director Errol Morris actually elicits a pseudo-confession from the real killer!

After this movie was released, Randall Adams got a new trial and was acquitted, which speaks to the power of the film's presentation of fact, despite its creative use of fiction to get there. Even now, knowing the subsequent developments in the case, TTBL remains completely seductive and brilliant. Though the approach has since been watered down by shit like "America's Most Wanted" and other true-crime TV shows, the film still stands tall as both pioneer and master of the form.

Errol Morris specializes in obsessively-focused documentaries that invariably change your mindset on the given topic (he also did Mr. Death and A Brief History of Time, among many others), and this one is probably still his best. The Philip Glass music – even though that, too, is by now a documentary cliché – brilliantly evokes the unravelling mystery of Adams's case with appropriate repetition of form, a tone of ongoing intrigue, and layers of sound that convey the many ambiguous angles to the events depicted.

I'd like to find fault with the movie simply because film critics love it so much, but sometimes, critics do get it right. The Thin Blue Line, simply said, is fucking good.

Review by La Fée