This film does a fine job of what you'd normally see in court on behalf of a guilty defendant. It wastes copious amounts of time clouding a very simple issue. You did the crime. You fled like a thief in the night. Now you have to deal with the consequences of your crime against society. You can't simply pay off the victim. If that was the case then only the poor couldn't simply pay their way out of a crime.And on the suffering. The horrible Polanski suffering!!! You'll hear about what cruelty (yes, "cruelty") poor Roman had to go through by suffering in his chalet, making films and winning awards while others in the industry rally to his defense because that's the way they are. All having their skeletons in the closet which they want to be kept there with the support of the industry.Hurrah for the Swiss, the US and everyone else who wouldn't let this self-entitled film maker get whatever he wants and wash the issue under the carpet. He should have just subjected himself to the court and done whatever time he'd have to do. But he's above it all and the film portrays him as the victim. It gets a 3 because it's not an impartial documentary, despite the fact that it does provide a good deal of information about the issue.

A wonderful look at corruption and justice, even if it's justice we don't agree with. Putting Polanski's crimes to one side, there is no denying he is an exceptional filmmaker. He is able to address a darkness many hope never to experience. It's very easy to see Polanski as a coward that ran from sentencing, but we also have a fascinating story of a judge hungry for fame. That cares more about peoples opinion of him, than he does keeping his word. It's a fascinating battle where everyone appears to be in the wrong, and the two lawyers seem to be the most honest of the bunch. It's a great watch, just for all of the different reactions it can evoke, with Polanski's troubled and harrowing life as a backdrop for greater tragedies to come.

It uses film to deconstruct and puzzle about an essential nature of film: that it comes from filmmakers. We find it difficult to separate the being of the art from the artist.So what do we do when the art is sublime and the artist a lunkhead? What about when the artist is screwed up, but screwed up in a way that we presume aids the creation of great art — things we ascribe to passion and edge, gathering and barely controlled expression. We forgive; we even celebrate.Chaplin was a sex addict? Why of course. Brando and Welles gluttons? Well, sure, they drink life for us. Lack of moral sense? We need them to have that, we suppose.The seductive element of this film is that uses the medium, pretending to reason, to show that the medium is not connected much to reason. It just doesn't matter whether this fantastic filmmaker is a fantastic guy. I do like the way he loves his actresses cinematically. All else is for lawyers on another planet. We hear about their own weaknesses here as well.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

This HBO documentary is not about Roman Polanski's entire life. In fact, it is to the greatest extent centered in the court case from which he fled in 1978, where he was sentenced for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, in fact a 13-year-old girl. A lot of archive footage is used and is very well-edited to paint a picture of a great director who has battled a lot of turmoils in life (most notably the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate). A lot of judicial figures are interviewed in depth regarding the court case, the very peculiar (and probably criminal) judge Rittenband, along with journalists from the time and friends of Polanski. The music - mostly period jazz - is used very nicely, often alongside period snippets from TV news. The main character is not interviewed for this documentary, and while I feel the documentary skirts away too much from Polanski's pedophile act, his victim has since forgiven him and there are a couple of interesting facts about her mother's role in the case. All in all this is a good documentary about the chilling events surrounding a human being who happens to be a world-renowned film-director. By the way, David Wells has admitted to lying in the documentary, and it's interesting to see if anything will really happen to Polanski now that he - 31 years after fleeing the USA - is arrested in Switzerland because of his outstanding punishment.