When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I don't generally review Documentaries, but sometimes a documentary comes along that is so compelling, people need to know about it. The Fear of 13 is the biography of a man, that most of us have never heard of, Nicholas Yarris. His was one of the first cases taken on by the Innocence Project and he is a prime example of not only the system failing to help someone, but a reason that it should scare the hell out of you. Yarris wasn't a great guy, when he was pulled over in the wrong place at the wrong time. Given his criminal history and inability to pay for a proper defense, Yarris was the perfect target for an over zealous District Attorney. Despite being based on completely circumstantial evidence, Yarris was convinced of murder and sentenced to death row. His life was troubled on the outside, but what happened in prison made it seem like a walk in the park. For twenty years, Yarris's cries fell on deaf ears, and it wasn't until he gave up and said, just kill me already, that someone finally noticed him. Nicholas Yarris's story is the kind of thing you can't make up and someday, I'd love to see a movie version of it. This man was never considered innocent and he wasn't proved guilty, yet he was forced to endure government sanctioned torture, the likes of which we couldn't possibly imagine. This is an eye opening documentary that must be seen by all and afterwards it may just change your opinion on our criminal justice system.

A convicted murderer (Nick Yarris) who has spent 23 years on Death Row tells his story. Yarris tells his own story, in the style of a one-man show. In a non-linear structure, he reveals his early life, youthful transgressions, arrest, and time on death row, with several twists and turns.This is definitely a "one man show". Although some sounds and images are added, it really amounts to 90 minutes of one man telling his life story. And he is an amazing speaker. You might think that someone who had a history of drug problems and who spent most of his life in prison would be a fool, but Yarris proves that assumption wrong. He claims to have read 1,000 books in three years, and it shows -- the language really rubbed off on him! This is definitely a must-see for anyone who is interested in the American justice system, both the good and the bad.

There are no words to express how deeply moving this documentary film is. I don't think there is an another actor or the like who could have told this story the way Nick Yarris tells it. He truly has a gift in this documentary that lures you deeper and deeper into the story. His expression of how some little things in life can change you and make you a better person and even stronger is spectacular. I truly hope that this documentary and Nick himself receives the recognition it so well deserves. I'll be watching this in the Academy Awards for best documentary category. I am an avid fan of true murder mystery documentaries and have watched countless over the years and I highly doubt that any other documentary will touch me how this one did. Nick Yarris is an incredibly strong man who is the hero in his own life.

**** SPOILER ALERT -- THIS SUMMARY CONTAINS PLOT DETAILS ****In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I am vehemently opposed to the death penalty under all circumstances. What I found extraordinary about Yarris's account is the dispassionate manner in which he tells his story, in the form of interviews and flashbacks to past events. Yarris is no choirboy -- this is made very clear when Yarris describes his successful escape from death row during the course of a transfer, and his time spent on the lam committing auto theft, robbery, and other serious crimes.Yet Yarris draws the viewer into his tale, in which the viewer learns about the botched handling of DNA evidence, which became available in the 1990s and which resulted in literally hundreds of prisoners (many on death row) across the nation being released from prison EVERY YEAR following the reversal of their convictions.We learn of Yarris's self-motivation and his ultimate success in teaching himself to read and to understand complex words, and his subsequent immersion into the world of books (thrillers, suspense novels, and nonfiction accounts -- one nonfiction account named "Crime and Punishment!").Yarris describes the manner in which he was prosecuted for assaulting a police officer, attempted murder of a police officer, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, and other charges stemming from his recapture. Clearly, Yarris is not the model prisoner or model citizen one would wish to have as a next door neighbor.But the inexcusable screw-ups in the handling of DNA evidence which finally exculpated Yarris make it clear that our criminal justice system is far from perfect, and that innocent people can and do get convicted, causing one to speculate as to the number of actually, factually innocent prisoners who have been executed, particularly in the decades before DNA evidence became available.At no point does Yarris engage in bathos or naked attempts to appeal to emotions. His account is calm, collected, and coherent at all times. Even his ultimate vindication and the reversal of his conviction are described without much emotion.What becomes clear is the psychological cost of sexual assault which is not addressed by therapeutic intervention (in this case, of Yarris himself as a youth). The writer was also left with serious doubts as to whether or not conditions on Pennsylvania's death row comport with Eighth Amendment prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.