I saw the HBO version with the changed title. My low rating does not reflect my lack of interest in the actual case itself. I wish 48 Hours made this instead of a pretentious filmmaker. THere is sadly, nothing new or strange about this case or the people involved that merits "a day in the life of" approach taken to showing the 4 days leading up to her sentencing and the past flashbacks. The doc starts off great showing anold eerie clip of the family at some carnival like setting.
We get thewhole picture of the dynamics and what life was and is like for these people in the first 15 minutes. Why is it deemed revelatory that the killers are ordinary good people? Showing the mother just go through the motions in those four days is a waste of my time and bores me. It is because we understand right away why she did what she did. We do not need to see boring footage to be convinced this is a normal woman.
They could have easily condensed the first 50 minutes into 15 minutes and spent more time exploring at least one or more of the following issues - why did the cops fail them, and why did such an indifferent system all of a sudden feel the need to extract justice now and sentence them to an inhumane amount of time in jail? Showing the judge mentioning that his hands were tied was not enough. There had to be some depiction of the defense team and why they failed the mother and son.
The blunt truth is this . This is a case that is sadly not uncommon in our society. The filmmaker taking a passive approach doesn't reveal to us anything that is educational or revelatory. What is of interest is how the system failed them before and after the murder. I would like to know what the defense attorneys said that did not convince her she didn't have a good chance of a better outcome? I would like to know why the DA was not persuaded to present a better deal.