The Phildelphia Examiner exposed the brutality, won a Pulitzer Prize, and stopped Rizzo's runaway train before he could change the city charter and run for a third term. "The Thin Blue Lie," a painful title, revisits the time and chronicles the reporters (Rob Morrow and Randy Quaid)who busted the story. The camerawork is a little cheap and the soundtrack is little too omnipresent, but the movie's a quick, dirty, 90-minute pleasure for a lazy day.
Morrow is a go-getter and new in town. Quaid is the good-natured newsman who wants to get his two stories a day and go home. As usual, the go-getter reveals the good natured sort as a victim of blind apathy, and the two combine forces, so to speak, to ferret out brutalized victims, as well as a [tough] cop who likes to go to work on suspects with a pair of handcuffs. There's even a lifesized white rabbit involved.
Morrow has the arrogant...schtick down cold. And Quaid broadens his range. Paul Sorvino has a cup of coffee as the tantrum-throwing Rizzo. Aside from G.W. "Proctor!!!" Bailey -- longtime "Police Academy" villain -- the supporting clan are actors I don't know, but have sufficiently big 1970s hair.
I like newspaper movies, usually because they're based on true stories -- aside from the ludicrous "The Pelican Brief" -- and because they cover familiar-yet-enjoyable ethical questions. Morrow's character is confronted by other reporters who make it clear Rizzo's regime lets them safely walk the streets at night. Morrow hasn't been around long enough to know the difference. In that detail, you sense how complacent a newsforce can become in the wake of a powerful leader, and how a fresh pair of eyes can see the injustices others have let fall through the cracks.
