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Into The Abyss

INTO THE ABYSS (Werner Herzog). 107 minutes. Opens Friday (December 9). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN


Although it was buzzed at the Toronto Film Festival as “Werner Herzog’s capital punishment movie,” Into The Abyss is less interested in the issue than in the specifics of one Texas triple homicide, for which one perpetrator, teenaged Michael Perry, was given a death sentence while another, the slightly older Jason Burkett, received life in prison.

The specifics of the case aren’t particularly murky. On a night in October 2001, Burkett and Perry murdered three people in a gated community in Conroe because they wanted their cars, then spent several days showing off the stolen vehicles until someone called the cops. A shootout ensued, and both men were tried for homicide. Herzog sat down with Perry in June 2010, just eight days before his scheduled execution.

For all the moody music on the soundtrack and the pensive pauses in the interviews, Herzog says little about anything he states his objection to capital punishment early in the proceedings, and that’s pretty much that. This isn’t a work of advocacy or even investigation.

Unlike, say, Errol Morris in The Thin Blue Line, Herzog isn’t seeking to exonerate anyone or introduce new evidence. He’s just there, observing the process as it rolls forward and wondering why.

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