Treat Williams is a best-selling author, father in a family with a loving wife and a couple of loyal children, two adopted. He's written a couple of essays critical of the police in his home town of Durham, North Carolina. So when his wife turns up dead at the bottom of the staircase they are alert for signs of foul play.
Williams claims she was drunk and fell backwards, hitting her head on the wall, killing herself accidentally. But a thorough investigation reveals all kinds of incriminating evidence. First, the wife died in a veritable blood bath with spatters on the wall. Second, the wine glasses from which Treat and his wife supposedly drank show his fingerprints but not hers. Third, someone has evidently tried to scrub away some bloody footprints around the body. The body itself seems somehow arranged and unnatural in its posture. An examination of the scalp shows not a single blunt force fracture but multiple lacerations and if she were beaned repeatedly. The "blow poker" -- an instrument used for blowing air into a fire -- could have been the instrument but it's missing from its supposedly accustomed location at the fireplace.
The case quickly turns a bit bizarre. Treat, a smooth and convincing speaker -- a novelist, after all -- invites a four-person camera crew into the house to record the death scene and the family's responses to the death, the investigation, and the murder trial that follows.
A scrutiny of Treat's background uncovers the fact that another woman he knew died under very similar circumstances. Treat himself is bisexual. A suggestion is made that he poisoned a friend in order to marry his friend's wife. He served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam but the film makes little of this except to note that, among his decorations, there is no official record of his two Purple Hearts.
The film leaves little doubt about its own conclusions, which accord with those of the jury in Durham. The guy did it.
The performances are routine, except for Kevin Pollack as Treat's defense attorney, who has a genuine grip on the role of the efficient and unflappable lawyer. The story sticks closely enough to the historical facts that it leaves at least a little room for doubt. Some real-life figures are introduced, including the famous Henry Lee, famous for his performance in the O. J. Simpson trial.
I don't know about the direction. Tom McLoughlin sometimes does stunts with the camera. Two examples: When the camera crew are filming Treat and his family, the image switches to black and white. I don't know why. Were the French film makers shooting in black and white? Next, a car pulls into a driveway. The camera moves along with the car's glossy rear fender until the vehicle stops, then droops and captures the opening of the driver's door and his foot stepping out. Then it follows the two feet inside a building. It just seemed like a failed attempt at art. There was a reason for it in Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," but here it seems pointless, except to call attention to itself.
Peterson is still in prison. Nobody except Peterson knows whether he was guilty of some sort of chicanery or not. The film includes all the incriminating evidence, sometimes twisting it a bit to Peterson's disadvantage. The sentence he received, life without parole, requires premeditation, not an impulsive crime of passion. One juror, interviewed afterward, claimed that premeditation only takes "seconds." That's pretty dumb. He may very well have been guilty, but I don't think it helped that he was a phony medal winner and a bisexual to boot, the relative sophistication of some Durham residents notwithstanding.
Williams claims she was drunk and fell backwards, hitting her head on the wall, killing herself accidentally. But a thorough investigation reveals all kinds of incriminating evidence. First, the wife died in a veritable blood bath with spatters on the wall. Second, the wine glasses from which Treat and his wife supposedly drank show his fingerprints but not hers. Third, someone has evidently tried to scrub away some bloody footprints around the body. The body itself seems somehow arranged and unnatural in its posture. An examination of the scalp shows not a single blunt force fracture but multiple lacerations and if she were beaned repeatedly. The "blow poker" -- an instrument used for blowing air into a fire -- could have been the instrument but it's missing from its supposedly accustomed location at the fireplace.
The case quickly turns a bit bizarre. Treat, a smooth and convincing speaker -- a novelist, after all -- invites a four-person camera crew into the house to record the death scene and the family's responses to the death, the investigation, and the murder trial that follows.
A scrutiny of Treat's background uncovers the fact that another woman he knew died under very similar circumstances. Treat himself is bisexual. A suggestion is made that he poisoned a friend in order to marry his friend's wife. He served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam but the film makes little of this except to note that, among his decorations, there is no official record of his two Purple Hearts.
The film leaves little doubt about its own conclusions, which accord with those of the jury in Durham. The guy did it.
The performances are routine, except for Kevin Pollack as Treat's defense attorney, who has a genuine grip on the role of the efficient and unflappable lawyer. The story sticks closely enough to the historical facts that it leaves at least a little room for doubt. Some real-life figures are introduced, including the famous Henry Lee, famous for his performance in the O. J. Simpson trial.
I don't know about the direction. Tom McLoughlin sometimes does stunts with the camera. Two examples: When the camera crew are filming Treat and his family, the image switches to black and white. I don't know why. Were the French film makers shooting in black and white? Next, a car pulls into a driveway. The camera moves along with the car's glossy rear fender until the vehicle stops, then droops and captures the opening of the driver's door and his foot stepping out. Then it follows the two feet inside a building. It just seemed like a failed attempt at art. There was a reason for it in Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," but here it seems pointless, except to call attention to itself.
Peterson is still in prison. Nobody except Peterson knows whether he was guilty of some sort of chicanery or not. The film includes all the incriminating evidence, sometimes twisting it a bit to Peterson's disadvantage. The sentence he received, life without parole, requires premeditation, not an impulsive crime of passion. One juror, interviewed afterward, claimed that premeditation only takes "seconds." That's pretty dumb. He may very well have been guilty, but I don't think it helped that he was a phony medal winner and a bisexual to boot, the relative sophistication of some Durham residents notwithstanding.