Vivid, engrossing, and surprising.
Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:16
Fresh:14
Rotten:2
Average Rating:6.7/10
Genre: Education/General Interest
Synopsis: How far would you go for your beliefs? That question, along with many others, is pondered in this thought-provoking film. The man of the title is on a mission to promote the death penalty in... How far would you go for your beliefs? That question, along with many others, is pondered in this thought-provoking film. The man of the title is on a mission to promote the death penalty in America. As a professor at Manhattan's New York Law School, Robert Blecker champions the importance of capital punishment, espousing the idea that the death penalty is justice for the worst of crimes. But when Blecker meets death-row inmate Daryl Holton, his ideals are put to the test. Daryl Holton committed the atrocious crime of killing his four children (earning him four death sentences), but the man is also well-spoken and he and Blecker bond, even as Blecker supports Holton's death. This complex documentary addresses a variety of issues and goes beyond just the death penalty debate. [More]
Director: Ted Schillinger
Director: Ted Schillinger
Producer: Bruce David Klein
Composer: Dan Dolan
Studio: Atlas Media Corp.
Reviews for Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead
In the documentary, Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead, New York Law School professor and well-known retributivist Blecker submits he can measure -- in his gut -- who deserves to die.
On a deeper level (and a skillfully conscious one on the part of filmmaker Ted Schillinger) it's a portrait of two men's utter loneliness in their thoughts.
Anyone who's gotten jazzed by a lively philosophy class (hello?) should find it fascinating.
A compelling, provocative and illuminating documentary that will inspire you to intelligently reexamine your own beliefs about the death penalty.
A thoughtful if dry discussion of the death penalty revolving around the titular gentleman.
Intriguing, thought-provoking documentary about a pro-death-penalty lawyer and his unlikely relationship with a murderer on death row will satisfy socially conscious viewers on both sides of the ever-controversial issue.
As for the filmmaker, Mr. Schillinger remains neutral to a fault. His documentary, while compelling, can also be frustrating.
Just as its subject likes to hear himself talk -- often in ever-more-vague blasts of logic clear only to himself -- this cheap-looking doc gives him lots of air.
Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead is straightforward as documentary filmmaking, but it’s fascinating as a dialectic on fairness.
Blecker’s climactic nighttime encounter with garden-variety execution advocates offers a resolution-by-proxy of the duo’s bizarre waltz, as well as a powerful home truth.
A legal joust that ends in the sort of satisfyingly ambiguous fashion that should spur post-screening conversation.
Miring itself in both the sound and troubling aspects of Blecker's views, as well as the honesty and hypocrisy of his actions, Schillinger's portrait unobtrusively allows its zealous, self-reflective subject to speak for himself.
As it turns out, its titular subject makes it one of the few genuinely problematic documentaries to come along in a long while.
The New York law professor's obsessive relationship to death-row inmate Daryl Holton, self-confessed slayer of his own four children, assumes enough bizarre twists to lay bare the myriad contradictions and prejudices.
The film's a wicked batch of screwy logic but, even when tossed and shaken, all the moving pieces fall into place.
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