Brother's Keeper Movie Review

In both Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills, the filmmakers take a look at a murder case in which community members have pretty much made up their minds about the innocence or guilt of the accused. There is also a heavily charged side issue in each case to cloud the evidence: in Keeper, it's incest; in Paradise, it's Satanism. I've heard audience members for both films insist that it's SO obvious what REALLY happened. (To them, maybe, but not to me!) Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky succeed in building reasonable doubts, which is all any investigative reporters can hope to do. There is one gory bloodletting sequence that has nothing to do with the rest of the story, but it emphasizes the pervasive atmosphere that the people in Brother's Keeper belong in another time and place, not in the New York countryside of the early 1990s.

1992 104m/C D: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky; C: Douglas Cooper. National Board of Review Awards ‘92: Best Feature Documentary; New York Film Critics Awards ‘92: Best Feature Documentary; Sundance Film Festival ‘92: Audience Award. VHS, LV