Incendiary: The Willingham Case Reviews
UR Chicago Magazine
As sober as a lab report, the excellent documentary metes out its findings with calm precision.
Shockya.com
Rather flatly told but still engaging throughout, this doc should appeal to both newsmagazine junkies and those impassioned by the death penalty debate.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Top CriticAlarming viewing for anyone who cares about the American justice system.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Paste Magazine
Despite the occasional broad-brush stroke, the filmmakers refuse to tell the viewer which side to take. There's no big-bang ending that tells the audience, once and for all, where the film or filmmakers stand.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7.3/10
Austin American-Statesman
Through the use of visuals and extensive interviews, Mims and Bailey have turned the Willingham case into a gripping saga.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
PopMatters
Incendiary contends that even if it's too late to save Todd Willingham, it's also long past time for the officials who ignored this obligation, Rick Perry included, to own up.
One Guy's Opinion
A formally conventional but provocative, and perhaps even important, piece of non-fiction pleading, worthy of being on a double bill with another bit of Texana, Errol Morris' 'The Thin Blue Line.'
Full Review
| Original Score: B
It's a sobering look at the danger of fallible people making irreversible decisions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Hollywood & Fine
Like a match being lit to a tinderpile of flimsy evidence that led to the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas in 2004.
Mr. Martin is confident in his convictions. The filmmakers are confident about their science. Justice, this strong documentary asserts, is at risk in the division.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
AV Club
It's too bad that Steve Mims and Joe Bailey, Jr.'s documentary Incendiary doesn't reach more effectively beyond those who already share its assumptions.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
If occasionally a tad dry, it's a doc that successfully inflames one's righteous indignation at government-sanctioned anti-intellectualism, even as it leaves slightly open the question of its deceased subject's actual guilt.
Crime doc about a dubious arson case is made more interesting by the involvement of Rick Perry.
A gripping, appalling and finally galling tick-tock of justice denied in modern-day Texas.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Incendiary: The Willingham Case is a frequently unsettling account of how dubious "science" possibly led to an irreversible miscarriage of justice.
Austin Chronicle
You know what they say: Everything's bigger in Texas, including the irrational hostility toward science, toward learning, toward temperance, as Mims and Bailey's well-made, deeply disheartening film demonstrates.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Q Network Film Desk
starts as a meticulous deconstruction of injustice, but ends up feeling more like an elaborate, preaching-to-the-choir anti-Perry campaign film
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Film-Forward.com
Documentary about injustice piles on facts still needs to make a cinematic case [with] better graphics and clearer explanations. . .Fire images visually drown out reasoning.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/10
