#304: The Thin Blue Line

Release Date: August 26th, 1988

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: Errol Morris

Directed by: Errol Morris

4 Stars

With his groundbreaking 1988 documentary, The Thin Blue Line, filmmaker Errol Morris more or less forged the true crime doc mold that Netflix and the other streamers are still using to this day: Interviewees are filmed from the shoulders up (in the case of The Thin Blue Line, looking directly into the camera lens), intercut with recreations of the events of the crime. 

Although this format is rote today, Morris’ film was so atypical in 1988 that he was excluded from the Best Documentary Feature category at that year’s Oscars. The Academy deemed his use of recreations as “non-fiction,” rather than documentary filmmaking. 

Doc or not, the subject of the film centers around the false conviction of an Ohio man, Randall Dale Adams, who was found guilty in 1976 of the murder of a Dallas police officer while traveling through Texas. This is despite a lack of evidence, a lack of motive, and no history of violence. 

The same could not be said about 16-year-old David Ray Harris - already on juvenile probation - who one morning stole two of his father’s guns before stealing a neighbor’s car and then hitting the road for Dallas from his small hometown of Vidor. Along the way he spotted a man hitchhiking with a gas can - Adams - whom he picked up along the side of the road. The two ended up spending most of the day together, smoking a little pot and drinking a 6-pack of beer before catching a drive-in movie. 

Both men are interviewed in The Thin Blue Line, and both men agree with this sequence of events up to this point. 

It’s after the drive-in, though, where the story diverts. According to Adams, Harris dropped him off at the motel where he was staying with his brother and that was the last he ever saw of the teenager.  

But according to the 16-year-old Harris, it was Adams who was behind the wheel when they were pulled over and Adams inexplicably shot and killed Officer Robert W. Wood.

Two suspects with two different versions of what happened that night. So why did law enforcement and the Dallas D.A.’s Office target Randall Dale Adams instead of the more likely suspect David Ray Harris?

That’s what Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line hopes to uncover.

It’s a riveting documentary.

Morris’ camera is so probing and arresting. As I mentioned, his interview subjects speak directly into the lens, so as we listen to their words, we are also listening to their eyes. We notice the slightest encroachment of pride or shame or evasion in their countenance. 

Some of the interviewees in The Thin Blue Line are honest people who simply got it wrong, while others are liars who try to fool us (and maybe themselves). Some are apathetic all together. Their view is that life is hard in rural Texas, where cops are racist, the courts are rigged, and sometimes an innocent man can be sent to his death.