Review of Deadline

This is one of those amazing documentaries that looks like it'd be deadly dull 'on paper' and then manages to completely blow your mind as it comes off the big screen. In an amazing turn of events a pharmacist turned politician decides to look deeper than the statistics, and investigate the cases of every person currently on death row in Illinois. His reason for doing so is mainly due to the efforts of some students in a journalism class who began to re-stage cases histories as part of a school project and found out that many of the death row convicts were innocent beyond the shadow of a doubt. Is the justice system biased against the poor? Or people of color?? OR is it merely inadequate due to the tremendous pressures placed on prosecutors to resolve high profile case??? In any event, what the Governor of Illinois attempts to do as he completes his term of office is the most amazingly humane investigation ever undertaken. If every governor in the USA would re-evaluate the death row penal system the way Illinois' George Ryan did, we wouldn't need a Supreme Court to decide these types of issues at all. This is a MUST-SEE documentary that at this time has no USA distributor. (go figure?) Governor Ryan's decision is the perfect ending to a perfectly made documentary, here's hoping everyone gets to see this film (someday).