The Thin Blue Line

The Thin Blue Line (1988) — watch online on iFILM. Errol Morris built this landmark documentary around a single question: did Randall Adams actually kill that Dallas police officer on a November night in 1976, or did the state of Texas convict the wrong man?

Morris spent months interviewing Adams, the real shooter David Harris, and witnesses whose courtroom testimony had locked the verdict in place. Staged recreations of the crime — lit like noir, repeated with small shifts — sit alongside those interviews, and each pass reveals a different version of the same night. No narration pushes a conclusion. The evidence speaks, then speaks again differently.

Released in 1988, the film triggered a legal review that freed Adams from death row. Philip Glass composed the score. Few documentaries have done what this one did: changed a verdict. If you care about true crime, justice or the mechanics of how memory distorts fact, stream The Thin Blue Line (1988) on iFILM.