91% Into The Abyss

All Critics (74) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (67) | Rotten (7)

Herzog is pursuing no agenda with Into the Abyss, despite his opposition to extreme judicial measures. He's seeking to answer the question of why people kill, especially in a situation such as this where the reason for the murders was so meaningless.

Into the Abyss does what too few documentaries these days do - it gives ample play to all sides of the argument. Herzog allows us to think things through on our own.

Herzog has managed another strange and intriguing look at a culture and the sorts of people it creates - victims, cops and criminals.

Herzog's investigation may not work as an anti-death-penalty editorial, but its findings are undeniably profound.

A disquieting, heartbreaking look at American crime and punishment.

The abyss here isn't capital punishment, the ostensible subject of the film; it's the seemingly unending capacity for causing and enduring pointless misery that humans seem to have.

An eerie, unsettling and slightly macabre attempt to understand the how and why of three senseless murders in 2001 in Texas.

The most memorable image here is the lethal-injection gurney. With its crossbar for the outstretched arms of doomed prisoners, it resembles a padded crucifix -- a ghastly and inelegant parody of a symbol of Christian comfort.

[Herzog] simply means to show us things as they are - and in this corner of Texas, just north of Houston, things are undeniably violent. And mean.

Into the Abyss makes Herzog's point powerfully, without descending to the level of polemic.

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.

Herzog unforgettably shows how when you pull tight the straps on men who've lain down to die, it leaves a mark.

This is the abyss the film shows, the frightening arbitrariness of the death penalty. People are born into poverty and violence by chance, and their fates -- as crime victims or victims of the state -- are also functions of chance.

The director's ability to objectively pursue this line of inquiry makes Into the Abyss a compelling, revealing work of art.

Herzog's death-row documentary hits hard

The overriding point of Into the Abyss, what keeps this sad, sorrowful film from becoming depressing and elevates it far above the usual chatter of liberal-conservative debate, is that there can be light on the other end of even the darkest of tunnels.

Herzog asks, in that probing yet gentle, meditative voice we've come to cherish, "What does it mean?" Oh, Werner. We don't ask such things in 'Merica.

Covers much the same ground as other death row movies, but with the Herzog difference.

Comes close to the voyeurism of Nick Broomfield's documentaries on Aileen Wuornos but is saved by Herzog's obviously deep conviction that capital punishment is evil.

"Into the Abyss" makes a strong case for the inhumanity of capital punishment, regardless of the crime or the criminal.

[Herzog's] piercing gaze provides a tightly focused look at the realities underlying our nation's continued reliance on this archaic tool of criminal justice.

The interviews that make up the balance of the film yield plenty of oddities of modern American life.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/into_the_abyss_2011/

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