Finished watching The Secret in Their Eyes this evening, a movie about a murder in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lovely young woman is raped and murdered. One of the officials (it's a little hard to tell just what rank or position these guys hold. This isn't the US) has two construction workers arrested and beats a confession out of them. Esposito, our hero, a fellow of similar rank discovers this and files an official complaint, which gets the bad cop responsible for this outrage posted to some remote backwater, or otherwise punished.
They get a lead on a suspect, but he vanishes. Time passes, the case is closed, and then one day our hero runs into the widower of the murdered woman. He has been looking for the suspect in train stations for a year without success. His tenacity inspires Esposito to reopen the case. With the help of his drunken compadre, they figure out where to look for the suspect and eventually apprehend him. He is convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
More time passes, and then one day the widower of the murdered woman sees the murderer out on the street, which causes him some confusion. He takes his questions to Esposito. When Esposito looks into it, he runs into his nemesis, the guy he got booted out. He is now working for some kind of anti-terrorism squad and they are using the culprit as an informer and undercover operator, or so he says. You get the feeling he has actually arranged to get the murderer out of jail solely to get back at Esposito.
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Monday evening we watched an episode of The Good Wife where they are suing an aircraft manufacturer on behalf of the surviving relatives of 50 or so people who were killed when a small airliner crashed. Their star witness commits suicide over some unrelated troubles, so they reach out to a financier who dealt with the aircraft company. Unfortunately, he's in jail. He murdered his wife, but they were unable to convict him of it. The best they could do was convict him of involuntary manslaughter. Now they need his testimony, but he wants his freedom. So they arrange for him to give them some help with another criminal case. In return he get's his freedom and they get their testimony.
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So we have two cases where a murderer is released from prison in exchange for helping the authorities with some other cases. The case from Argentina filled me outrage at the scumbag who released the killer because he did it only for his own personal interests. The one from Chicago only gave me a slight feeling of disgust. Was there any real difference?
In the Chicago case, the cops are trying to make a case against a guy who is already in prison. He is organizing crimes on the outside. If they convict him of these new charges, what will they have gained? As for the murderer, well, who knows how that is going to play out. He might get hit by a train, or the guy in prison may arrange for him to be hit by a train. You never know about these things.
The case in Argentina had a different outcome, but that would be telling.
The Secret in Their Eyes is actually a love story, and a very good one at that.
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