Into the Abyss

With an issue as divisive as capital punishment, it’s difficult to make a documentary that is provocative without turning preachy.

Oscar-nominated German filmmaker Werner Herzog has faced that dilemma before, and Into the Abyss is the latest example of the director’s ability to be even-handed in the most polarizing of circumstances.

Naturally, Herzog chooses Texas as the setting for his exploration of the death penalty and its ramifications. Specifically, the film’s case study involves a Death Row inmate named Michael Perry, who Herzog interviewed days before his execution in 2010.

Perry’s sentence stemmed from a triple homicide in the town of Conroe, north of Houston, about a decade earlier. The case involved Perry and his best friend, Jason Burkett, who were each teenagers at the time. The cold-blooded murders of a mother, her teenage son and a friend were related to the attempted theft of a red Camaro.

Herzog gets candid interview footage not only with the condemned men and their families, but also the grieving families of the victims, trying to discern the value of life and the reasons for killing at both the personal and institutional level. He also talks to the authorities, and to a priest and an executioner who offer their own perspectives.

Herzog (Grizzly Man), whose voice can be heard as the interviewer throughout the film, is forthright with his own opinion. But he isn’t interested in politics, at least not on-screen, although he does indict the state of Texas for its high rate of executions. And his film isn’t necessarily about trying to sway viewers toward one side or the other as much as it is about probing the minds of victims and perpetrators alike.

The film sometimes becomes bogged down in trivial details, or lingers too long on scene-setting images that don’t add much.

However, there’s a lot of compelling material thanks to Herzog’s incisive, in-depth interviews, which are meticulously edited (sometimes in longer conversational-style takes) and give the film a somber and contemplative tone that fits the subject matter.

The result doesn’t provide easy answers, but sets itself apart from other films on similar topics and offers a thought-provoking examination of contemporary crime and punishment.

Rated PG-13, 106 minutes.