Directed by one of my favorite masters of all time, Werner Herzog, Into the Abyss is a documentary which uses a crime and the impending execution of one of its perpetrators to try and answer the question why do people and the government kill? The movie begins with a long dialogue between the director and a priest whose duty is to administer last rites to the prisoners. It becomes clear during the very first sequence that the director is intensely anti-capital punishment. Then this moves towards the crime which was the killing of three people for a particular car and how the case was made against the killers. Herzog, with his sympathetic and German accented tone, expertly interviews the killers, one of whom was executed eight days after talking to him. There are echoes of In Cold Blood in this but they don't really resonate with you. The movie is well intentioned and manages to stir you for a few times. However, it lacks any real punch. There are no great revelations and I thought that the structure of the story telling was a bit convoluted at times as if the editor had f***ed up a bit. There are better documentaries and movies on this subject and two notable mentions have to be the life of David Gale and the Thin Blue Line. This is good cinema but doesn't hold a candle to those great and life changing works of art. For me personally, this is Herzog's weakest effort. But as a documentary it is above average. 3 out of 5
Review of Into the Abyss
