After 23 years on death row, convicted killer Nick Yarris petitioned for the right to be executed promptly, exasperated by an appeals system that had failed to overturn his conviction. British director David Sington’s gripping documentary gets Yarris to tell his story, while slyly withholding information that leaves us wondering about truth and fiction as it builds towards a dramatic denouement. Yarris is a charismatic speaker, his performance sharpened by jail-bound immersion in literature, refining his narrative skills as he recounts/rewrites the past and future. Not so much an interviewee as a monologuist, Yarris leads us on a labyrinthine journey that has as much to say about the art of storytelling as it does about the iniquities of crime and punishment.
