I wait for True Crime docs the way a 5 year old kid waits for Christmas. And the Netflix documentaries are always in a class well above any other streaming platform. But their recent offering, Elize Matsunaga – Once Upon a Crime Docu-series, is not up to par.
What would have made for an engrossing 90 minute feature, has been stretched thin into a four-part series that treads the same ground over and over again, with very few twists or cliffhangers to make one eager to move on to the next episode as the credits roll.
The story, which took place in Brazil from 2012-2019, is intriguing: the beautiful wife of a very rich man, Marcos Matsunaga, murders him and dismembers his corpse. What was her motive? Was it his illicit affairs which were captured by her private investigator? Or was it abuse, which she alleged in court.
Did she do it alone, or did she have help? Did her background as an escort play into this?
All valid questions, some of which are answered, others are not. And the “hook”, if you will, is that the filmmakers got Elize herself to tell her story on camera, during a furlough from prison.
Maybe it’s because the series is in Portugese and I watched it dubbed in English ( I am normally a subtitles guy) but there is a distinct lack of emotion among the many talking heads who populate the series. Even the confessed killer herself seems somewhat sedated. And because she freely admits that there remain details which she will never reveal, an anti-climactic vibe pervades.
Without the tension of far better films, like the new docuseries Heist, it all just seems rather flat and fails by comparison. Maybe move this back in queue behind ‘Sophie: A Murder in West Cork’ and ‘Heist.’