This stunning documentary captures a mesmerizing and deeply touching courtroom drama that will make you shout out in rage as well as cry. And you will cheer at a man who is a real-life hero; an angry, chain-smoking warrior whose commitment and dedication to this case provide a shining example for how EVERY defense attorney should work when there is so much at stake for the accused (alas, in real life, real justice mostly seems to be reserved for Hollywood movies). This film will stay with you long after you finished watching. 9 stars out of 10.

In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:

imdb.com/list/ls070242495

Documentaries like these are extraordinarily infuriating. Add to this documentaries like "Attica," "The Central Park Five," "The Kalief Browder Story," as well as "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God," and "Deliver Us from Evil." All of these documentaries are about injustices done by a powerful system.

In "Murder on a Sunday Morning" Mary Ann Stephens was killed in Jacksonville, Florida. A fifteen-year-old African-American boy was picked up for said murder roughly two hours later as he was on his way to Blockbuster to fill out a job application. When the husband of the victim saw Brenton Butler in the back of the squad car he positively identified him as the killer. With a positive ID from Mr. Stephens, the police went to work pinning the crime on Brenton. They didn't care about doing good police work, they only cared that they had a suspect who they could arrest and prosecute.

I don't even want to get into the known fallibility of cross-racial identification because that was all too obvious. It was just a terrible shame that more than one officer of the law did what they could, not to investigate, but to force a confession out of a scared teen.

This documentary has a happy ending though. Because of an excellent public defender named Patrick McGuiness and a co-counsel named Ann Finnell the jury deliberated all of 45 minutes before coming back with a not-guilty verdict. So, this time a man didn't have to languish for years in prison before the truth came out. That was the best part of the entire documentary. I wish there were more Patrick McGuinesses out there.

"Murder on a Sunday Morning" was an Oscar-winner for Best Documentary Feature--a pretty prestigious award to say the least. And, on IMDb the reviews are mostly very favorable. I loved how like a good documentary this one had something to say and worked to right a wrong. However, I am surprised that the technical aspects of the film haven't been really discussed, as it is NOT an especially pretty documentary and seems to consist of lots of videotape arranged in a semi-professional manner. In short, although it's got a lot going for it, it is an ugly looking film. Because so much of the film seems to lack good editing and the film is VERY, VERY dry and could use incidental music and energy, I found it VERY hard to stick with the film--even when it brought up a lot of great points about the justice system, prejudice and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. I know this makes me sound like a jerk, but it just didn't look very professional or well made--certainly not like something you'd expect to win the highest award the entertainment world can offer. Tough going, that's for sure.