The Motive - In cerca di un movente

A potentially fascinating case, but production levels that look like they came from someone's back shed, and a line of enquiry that goes nowhere and asks nothing, results in a lot of air and gossamer, and nothing else.

A wild story, no doubt. If it had just stuck to facts that would have been one thing. But they tried to be investigative, but didn't get a single thing out of anyone. Good use of archival footage, but could have been shorter, the defense attorney said nothing useful and instead wasted our time and the documenters'.

The premise of "The Motive" is intriguing enough to warrant a documentary. A fourteen year old boy kills his parents and two sisters, shows no remorse and never provides a justification. The 'no remorse' aspect can be attributed to a mental disorder. However the roughly two hours of episodes never provides an answer as to why he did it. The frustrating attitude of defense lawyer Yossi Arnon of "I know but I'll never tell" just gets played out for far too long. And having to watch close up shots of his old man gecko-like tongue flicking in and out of his mouth was unpleasant. Watching four episodes and never hearing the name of the central figure was confusing at first. I had to search online for why that was. The identity of minors must has been protected by law in Israel. That's fine but it's never mentioned in the docu-series. So you are left wondering why his name is never mentioned and yet he's shown throughout in news footage and home movies. Only until the end credits roll do you realize that it was all re-enactments. Re-enactments in documentaries are now common place but they usually are so stylized that you know what they are without needing to be told. But with 'The Motive' I felt very confused as to what was real and what was a re-enactment. I can only be sure that the interviews were real.

Kept showing the same scenes over and over again , and to this day no one knows the motive. A horrific crime like the one committed should have been far more compelling, instead it became boring .

The case seems to be very interesting, this documentary isn't. Nothing missed if skipped.

There is one minute of interview and one minute of old photos and filmed scenes. Some of these scenes are not even real but staged. This alternation between information and footage continues for 4 ours. And even some of the interviews could be skipped completely and it wouldn't change the documentary to the bad.

'Investigative' journalists who don't know how to ask questions. A teenager could do better. Some of the interviews are like this (seriously like this): Interviewee: 'I know some details' Journalist: 'but you want tell me?' Interviewee: 'no' ... 5 seconds slience Journalist: 'if you tell me, would i understand more?' Interviewee: 'yes' ... 10 seconds silence Journalist: 'wow' ... cut WTF was this?!?!