The film opens with a police report that a son has executed his father - this is fact.
Several experts comment on the psychopathic behaviours shown by this troubled young man.
Perhaps things are not as they seem.
A bit of digging around and it seems the father may be abusive.
We speak to the women surrounding the incident who focus with laser intensity on the son - leaving their lives opaque and blurry.
The documentary-makers allow the women to tell some ambiguous, misleading and sometimes untrue statements that do not align with any kind of reality that we are shown.
So perhaps they are not what they seem?
Then we see the defence team who lament how the boy is doomed to go to prison and they will have to lobby hard to get any kind of justice for him as he clearly killed his father.
Then, after two hours of dancing around, the documentary-makers decide it is time to mention all the testimonies and evidence showing that the father was a violent, abusive, control freak who no one would shed a tear over his loss.
Oh, yeah and on the day of the incident the father had lost everything: his job, his family, his control and maybe even his sanity - making him a very dangerous man.
Now that half the story is no longer obscured everyone agrees that the boy has clear mitigating circumstances and any sentence should be lenient.
This is the worst kind of documentary, where smoke and mirrors are used to obscure facts and portray victims as perpetrators and then whip away the curtain with a flourish and pretend that expectations have been subverted.
No, you just lied to us and we took that information in good faith.
The only interesting part of this story was not investigated.
In the USA is the policy when responding to allegations of child abuse just to send a beat officer around and ask the child on the drive way (in front of their alleged abuser) if they are ok?
Despite the child barely existing in the system: no school records, medical records, dental records, nobody thought to even mention it to Social Services or follow up at all.
Is this normal in the USA?
I don't know as the documentary didn't seem interested in the slightest.
Several experts comment on the psychopathic behaviours shown by this troubled young man.
Perhaps things are not as they seem.
A bit of digging around and it seems the father may be abusive.
We speak to the women surrounding the incident who focus with laser intensity on the son - leaving their lives opaque and blurry.
The documentary-makers allow the women to tell some ambiguous, misleading and sometimes untrue statements that do not align with any kind of reality that we are shown.
So perhaps they are not what they seem?
Then we see the defence team who lament how the boy is doomed to go to prison and they will have to lobby hard to get any kind of justice for him as he clearly killed his father.
Then, after two hours of dancing around, the documentary-makers decide it is time to mention all the testimonies and evidence showing that the father was a violent, abusive, control freak who no one would shed a tear over his loss.
Oh, yeah and on the day of the incident the father had lost everything: his job, his family, his control and maybe even his sanity - making him a very dangerous man.
Now that half the story is no longer obscured everyone agrees that the boy has clear mitigating circumstances and any sentence should be lenient.
This is the worst kind of documentary, where smoke and mirrors are used to obscure facts and portray victims as perpetrators and then whip away the curtain with a flourish and pretend that expectations have been subverted.
No, you just lied to us and we took that information in good faith.
The only interesting part of this story was not investigated.
In the USA is the policy when responding to allegations of child abuse just to send a beat officer around and ask the child on the drive way (in front of their alleged abuser) if they are ok?
Despite the child barely existing in the system: no school records, medical records, dental records, nobody thought to even mention it to Social Services or follow up at all.
Is this normal in the USA?
I don't know as the documentary didn't seem interested in the slightest.