I love true crime documentaries and Netflix does churn out a number of them every year. However the quality ranges from very high to simply poor. With the highlight of this year for me being Sophie a murder in west cork, to the bad, Sons of Sam.... What makes a documentary good in my opinion? For it to feel compelling and captivating without the necesity to over dramatize everything. This series of 6 episodes is made up of 3 two part stories.... The first story is about the heist of money truck, the second is about the heist of money from a airport warehouse and the third and perhaps the weakest..... the theft of bourbon.... all these stories have dramatized recreations of what happened. (perhaps to put something on the screen) while people were being interviewed about their experiences of planning the crimes they commited and how they escaped and eventually got caught etc.
The recreations sadly reminded me of sometimes cheesy overdramatized exagerated ww2 documentaries...... instead of keeping things simple, perhaps with just nice cinematography and cutting the length from 2 hours one.... it could have been better. Also big negative was that the people being "interviewed" were at times acctresses, a big no no.... if you can't get the people have a voice over person or something more traditional. It felt deceptive
Sophie a murder in west cork on the contrary was more simple, It didn't insist on the use of recreations, but rather capture the beautiful scenary of the area and interweave it with interviews etc.
So im going to have to give it a six because its watchable, albeit not a great watch.
