The great thing about Herzog doing a film like this is that
although it contains all the types of scenes you’d see if Dateline NBC did the exact same story, Herzog infuses everything
with a curious irony and surrealism, accentuated by his outsider’s perspective and
his own voice as narrator. As he has
throughout his career, in features as well as documentaries, his mordant sense
of humor mixes with a pronounced fatalism to make even the most mundane images
and remarks heavy with portent. Herzog
states early on that he is opposed to capital punishment and that’s about the
end of it, as this is not a political film, but he nevertheless gives fair time
to those both for and against the death penalty. We meet Michael Perry, who is to die by
execution mere days later for the murders of three people during a crime spree
sparked by the theft of a car. Herzog’s
credibility is impeccable because he consistently forgoes making an agenda out
of the issue of state execution. A
handful of questions are even raised about the soundness of the case that
convicted Perry, but Herzog is resolutely focused on the human beings concerned
and how the situation has effected them.
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