"Deadline" - July 30th on NBC - Don't miss it

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http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/movies/mmx-040602-movies-review-mw-deadline,0,6812645.story?coll=mmx-movies_top_heds

Movie review: 'Deadline'

Is the Old Testament's "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" still applicable? Should the state execute convicted killers? Or should justice, as Abraham Lincoln once said, be tempered with mercy?

"Deadline," a good documentary on a momentous subject, tends toward Lincoln's view. Opening Friday at the Gene Siskel Center--with a special personal appearance at the premiere by the film's main player, ex-Illinois Governor George Ryan--"Deadline" is about the morality/legality of capital punishment and the factors behind Ryan's controversial decision two days before leaving office in 2003 to commute the executions of 164 Illinois prisoners on Death Row.

Simultaneously Ryan pardoned four Death Row inmates who had been found innocent--and there lies the crux of his decision.

"Deadline" contains interviews with victims, advocates, Death Row inmates and lawyers--including attorney-author Scott Turow--and many others. But it doesn't really present both sides of the debate equally well. Or try to. We don't get many eloquent statements here from death penalty partisans--aside from devastating testimony from families destroyed by admitted murderers also saved by Ryan. snip

"Deadline" is a prime example of advocacy journalism--a form often criticized but perfectly honorable. Most importantly, it gives you a chance to ruminate on some crucial questions of human error, justice and life-and-death.

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