Herzog is a competent filmmaker and this documentary has its moments but it's way too long. Supposedly a meditation on the death penalty it meanders, showing long tedious interviews with friends and relatives of both victims and perpetrators. There are also just too many long segments of static graphics combined with spooky music. Guess those are supposed to encourage the audience to meditate on the issues concerning life and death. In any case, the appeal here is almost wholly emotional. Herzog is against the death penalty and he pulls out all stops to show the apparent boyish innocence of the killers and recount the miserable childhoods they suffered. There's a long sequence where one killer's father goes on and on about what a failure he was as a parent. The father is also serving a life sentence for murder. The implication is that of course those sweet boys were turned into killers by the bad influence of their environment and just happened to have made a mistake, as boys will.
The backstory is entirely different and for that reason the movie, while showing interesting crime scene video, fails to examine very carefully the case against the two. The investigation and capture of the suspects comes out in fragments, there is no coherent narrative here. What was, exactly, the case against them? This film is long on emotion and short on details. These killers were not innocent boys who got caught up in some prank that went wrong. They went to a house to kill and rob and had no compunction about killing again to try to cover up their crime. They were, as the details of the crime make clear, vicious, murdering psychopaths. Compassion might dictate that they should be kept alive but at what cost? This movie doesn't actually address the details in any comprehensive way. When you realize what those young men did there's a natural tendency to want to see them got rid of, permanently. But whereas revenge is considered unworthy of civilized people, we are left with the practical problem of what to do with criminals who are very unlikely to be rehabilitated and must live the rest of their long lives at taxpayer expense.
It is a copout for this film to dodge these issues. Whereas we learn more of the death house procedures than we ever wanted to know there is little discussion about issues of crime and punishment. The film allows the viewer to come to his own conclusions, which is good, but provides a lot more emotion than discussion on the subject of the death penalty. Herzog can present compelling interviews with plenty of emotion but he has difficulty with a coherent narrative.
The backstory is entirely different and for that reason the movie, while showing interesting crime scene video, fails to examine very carefully the case against the two. The investigation and capture of the suspects comes out in fragments, there is no coherent narrative here. What was, exactly, the case against them? This film is long on emotion and short on details. These killers were not innocent boys who got caught up in some prank that went wrong. They went to a house to kill and rob and had no compunction about killing again to try to cover up their crime. They were, as the details of the crime make clear, vicious, murdering psychopaths. Compassion might dictate that they should be kept alive but at what cost? This movie doesn't actually address the details in any comprehensive way. When you realize what those young men did there's a natural tendency to want to see them got rid of, permanently. But whereas revenge is considered unworthy of civilized people, we are left with the practical problem of what to do with criminals who are very unlikely to be rehabilitated and must live the rest of their long lives at taxpayer expense.
It is a copout for this film to dodge these issues. Whereas we learn more of the death house procedures than we ever wanted to know there is little discussion about issues of crime and punishment. The film allows the viewer to come to his own conclusions, which is good, but provides a lot more emotion than discussion on the subject of the death penalty. Herzog can present compelling interviews with plenty of emotion but he has difficulty with a coherent narrative.