The Thin Blue Lie

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable enough straight-to-video journalism tale
Review: Frank Rizzo made a stamp as Phildelphia mayor in the 1970s; he cleaned the streets of crime in a way Rudy G. could have only dreamed in New York. But how he did it -- well, people whispered, and police carried big sticks. Not unlike the LAPD of the mid-90s, the force spiraled out of control, feasting on violence and hubris, removing lines so it didn't have any to cross.

The Phildelphia Examiner exposed the brutality, won a Pulitzer Prize, and stopped Rizzo's runaway train before he could change the city charter and run for a third term. "The Thin Blue Lie," a painful title, revisits the time and chronicles the reporters (Rob Morrow and Randy Quaid)who busted the story. The camerawork is a little cheap and the soundtrack is little too omnipresent, but the movie's a quick, dirty, 90-minute pleasure for a lazy day.

Morrow is a go-getter and new in town. Quaid is the good-natured newsman who wants to get his two stories a day and go home. As usual, the go-getter reveals the good natured sort as a victim of blind apathy, and the two combine forces, so to speak, to ferret out brutalized victims, as well as a [tough] cop who likes to go to work on suspects with a pair of handcuffs. There's even a lifesized white rabbit involved.

Morrow has the arrogant...schtick down cold. And Quaid broadens his range. Paul Sorvino has a cup of coffee as the tantrum-throwing Rizzo. Aside from G.W. "Proctor!!!" Bailey -- longtime "Police Academy" villain -- the supporting clan are actors I don't know, but have sufficiently big 1970s hair.

I like newspaper movies, usually because they're based on true stories -- aside from the ludicrous "The Pelican Brief" -- and because they cover familiar-yet-enjoyable ethical questions. Morrow's character is confronted by other reporters who make it clear Rizzo's regime lets them safely walk the streets at night. Morrow hasn't been around long enough to know the difference. In that detail, you sense how complacent a newsforce can become in the wake of a powerful leader, and how a fresh pair of eyes can see the injustices others have let fall through the cracks.

Rating:
Summary: Great Newspaper Thriller!
Review: If you like fast-paced thrillers that rely more on brains than brawn, this one's for you. Based on the true story of a pair of newspaper reporters in Philadelphia during the Bicentennial, it is in the vein of great films like Watergate. Jonathan Neumann (Rob Morrow) arrives in town to find prisoners routinely showing up in court with all sorts of painful bruises. When he questions why, he's told it's "jailhouse lawyering", where prisoners get together and beat each other prior to their appearances in court then claim police brutality, just to get their arrests thrown out. The problem is, from what Jonathan sees, none of the arrests are being thrown out. So he begins to suspect it is something more. In the end, he goes up against the most powerful man in Philadelphia, the former police chief and now Mayor, Frank Rizzo. It is a really exciting and thought-provoking film, with great camerawork,lightning and directing.