Beautiful, moving film.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

HBO documentaries tend to be of pretty good quality. Here the documentary talks about how the media hype interfered with Pam Smart's chance at a fair trial. No doubt different decisions would have been made had this not been such a media circus. The tale of the killing of Greg Smart was irresistible to the media. You have the beautiful 23 year old widow as the accused murderess by proxy of her husband, the teens she had influence over in her job with the school carrying out the crime, and the sordid affair she had with the actual 15 year old shooter. No doubt the judge liked the idea of Clint Eastwood possibly playing him in the movie, and maybe that was on his mind when he refused to move the trial. You have people who claimed to see the actual teen killers getting worked up before going on the stand so they could give "good performances". Method actor teen murderers! Who would have thought it! The Smart family themselves complained about the accused boys, given sentences for second degree murder in return for their testimony against Pam, smiling after their testimony.So given what is shown here maybe there is room to doubt. But HBO left out one little thing - the tapes that came from the wire Cecilia Pierce was wearing when she talked to Pam. Gone was that ladylike "woe is me" victim of circumstance demeanor. Instead Pam talks like she very well knows what went down when her husband was killed, and you can hear her talented manipulation of Cecilia when she tells her not to cooperate and tell the police everything. That was the damning evidence that HBO did not talk about and turned this from probably a hung jury result into a conviction. Those tapes were pretty clear too - not mangled with noise as many have said. I was one of the many listening/watching in real time when this trial aired on TV.One thing I thought was interesting came from one of the jurors. She said there were three that were threatening to hang the jury in spite of everything. She also said that if she had known the only sentence the judge could give Pam was life with no parole she would have hung it anyways. Really? What exactly should you do with somebody who manipulated teens into killing her husband because she is angry about a one night stand he had a few months before? Give them a stern talking to and send them home to mother? I'd recommend the documentary for what is there, but I'm knocking off a few stars for what was likely omitted because it makes the case more open and shut.

I live in Londonderry, New Hampshire, walking distance to where this entire Pamela Smart saga occurred. I also collect documentaries and have been a student of the genre for many years. In both areas of knowledge, this "documentary" is breathtakingly bad: it is a distortion of the evidentiary facts of the Smart case and it is an amateurish production concocted by a director hell-bent on convincing the gullible that Pamela Smart is innocent.Was the Smart case a big media story here in little New Hampshire? Of course it was. But is this the reason Pamela Smart was found guilty? Hell, no. Pamela Smart convicted Pamela Smart: her entire "defense" was that she didn't sexually manipulate the child student of hers, Flynn, into killing her husband, and that she didn't even know about it until afterwards. 25 years later, this director is trying to get us to buy the same story.Unfortunately for him, reasonable people who listen to the secret tape recordings of Smart made prior to her arrest, come to the same conclusion the reasonable people of her jury came to: this "defense" is a ridiculous lie. But why let facts get in the way of a good story, right? Except that this HBO piece is not a good story, it's an example of the worst of propaganda films: twist and contort the facts, aggrandize speculation and minor details, hide or discount the facts that don't fit in with your agenda. This director's agenda is to elevate Pamela Smart to the status of a wrongly-convicted heroine. This is absurd to those who actually know the case. Gregg Smart was an innocent 24-year-old who has spent the last 25 years in the cold ground of East Derry Cemetery, put there by pedophile Pamela Smart and the boys she so clearly manipulated to kill him (for the life insurance money she would get). Giving this cretin any voice to spew her long-ago-disproved lies is bordering on evil, in my opinion.Instead of wasting your time with this ridiculous propaganda film, read the transcripts of the tape recordings Smart's attorneys desperately tried to prevent the jury from hearing (available online). You will be stunned, her guilt is so obvious. Media coverage had nothing to do with Smart's conviction: every juror said the same thing: it was the tapes.As Smart herself puts it in one of the tapes, as she's trying to prevent her intern from cooperating with police, "If you tell the truth you're gonna have to send Bill, you're gonna have to send Pete, you're gonna have to send J.R. and you're gonna have to send me to the (expletive) slammer for the rest of our entire life,". You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe the new "truth" that she had nothing to do with it and is an innocent heroine convicted because of media coverage. It is simply absurd. This "director" is just an amateur who made one previous short film about his own father, nothing more; he is desperate to find material, apparently. Don't be sucked in by his distortions and spin: read the transcripts instead.I'll leave you with some other parts of the police transcripts of Smart's statements to Cecilia Pierce and you decide if there's a snowball's chance in hell of her being innocent: "I'm afraid one day you're gonna come in here and you're gonna be wired by the (expletive) police and I'm gonna be busted," (Busted? But I thought you were innocent, Pam.) On the subject of Ralph Welch, another high school kid, who one of her accomplices told about the murder: "Nothing was going wrong until (expletive) they told Ralph. . . . It's their (expletive)faults . . . that they told Ralph, you know," Later, when her arrest seemed imminent: "I don't know what the hell's going'on ... All I know is that, uh, pretty soon J.R. is probably gonna roll." (Why would an innocent person care if one of the murderers would "roll" and tell the police everything?) Smart was hoping that the court would deem as juveniles the 15-year-olds she sent to kill her husband so that they wouldn't turn on her: "You know, if they get certified as juveniles, then nobody will ever know anything, and they'll all be out in a year, you know, when they turn 18. ..." (What does innocent Pam mean by "ever know anything"?) She then tells Pierce her plan if the kids are certified as adults: Pierce: "He's going to say that you knew about it before it happened, which is the truth." (if J.R. does "roll") Smart: "Right, ... Well, so then I'll have to say, 'No, I didn't' and then they're either gonna believe me or they are gonna believe J.R.-sixteen-years-old-in-the-slammer. And then who (will they believe)? Me, with a professional reputation, and of course that I teach. You know, that's the thing. They are going to believe me." NONE OF THESE QUOTES are even MENTIONED in this "documentary". All this dishonest director does is try to make the viewer think that that the tapes are corrupted and should be IGNORED because of ....let's see...'quality issues' and 'inaudible parts'. Oh, and if you don't buy that because the AUDIBLE parts incriminate Smart so absolutely, then Smart was simply PRETENDING to be involved in the murder, conducting her 'own investigation' into her husband's brutal death. Really? That's the best you can do? Pamela Smart is absolutely guilty and should rot in prison for the rest of her miserable life. Do not get caught up in this film's web of lies wherein Smart is an innocent heroine and the boys she corrupted and doomed are to blame for her imprisonment. That is a concocted fairy tale.

Jeremiah Zagar's HBO documentary tells the story of the high-profile New Hampshire trial and conviction of Pamela Smart, the accused murderer of Gregg Smart (her husband) in 1990. The film is packed with interviews—which includes: Smart herself, family, friends, accused conspirators, authors, reporters, and others—and does a pretty good job of letting the viewer choose who to believe. Right from the get-go, the film's main interest is how the notorious media coverage may have interfered with Smart's right to a fair trial, and Zagar not only never lets up but actually keeps pushing the issue harder and harder as the film progresses, making itself as sensationalistic as the subjects it's criticizing. Still, very intriguing and quite education for those who were not around or do not remember the hype of it all in the early-'90s.*** (out of four)

This is an oddly structured documentary.The first quarter seems to assume that everybody knows the case and remembers the basic details. It's as if the filmmakers (who apparently spent years on getting this made) forgot who their audience was. Or, they thought it was still the year 2000! Some of the viewers weren't even born when this happened and many many others were too young. Further, this happened almost a quarter century ago, and yet, even the basic facts are barely analyzed in that first section of the movie.Yes, the filmmakers are trying to concoct their own counter-theory that the trial, testimony and public perception were all 'tainted' by the media, but, you need the context in order to test that theory. Fortunately, the rest of the movie does fill in many of the details, but you can't help but criticize the structure of the piece. Of course, an even BIGGER problem is that Pamela Smart (and by implication, the filmmakers who seem stacked in favor of her) seemed to rest their 'hopes' on Raymond Fowler testifying after his release that he would exonerate her. When he doesn't the filmmakers pull out their handy counter-theory and seem to indicate that Fowler can't remember what really happened, instead he is regurgitating what is shown in the TV movie.There are some stylistic flourishes like the clips on old TVs and the whole 'Theater' wraparound. But, these are just standard devices and don't really make the movie any more cinematic (and, if the whole theory is about the populace being influenced by what was shown on TV - why is the wraparound in a THEATER?? Shouldn't it be a gathering around a TV set?) Ironically, the best take on media manipulation in the Smart case remains the movie TO DIE FOR - an almost wholly fictionalized version!