Minutes after smashing her husband’s skull with a hammer, Wendy Maldonado of Grants Pass, Ore., called 911. The operator asked: Did he try to hurt you? Ms. Maldonado replied: Every day of my life.That answer — in its full form, including a word you won’t hear on television outside of premium cable — is the title of an hourlong documentary Monday night on HBO. The channel is promoting the film as a study in domestic violence, but what’s best about it is that it treats the subject obliquely. It’s really a study in character and tragic circumstance, one that poses questions about justice and human nature but doesn’t reach for answers.
It’s telling that HBO imposed the new, more provocative title, with its emphasis on abuse, and jettisoned the director Tommy Davis’s original title: “One Minute to Nine,” a reference to Ms. Maldonado’s last minute of freedom before being sentenced in her husband’s death.
Aaron Maldonado died that night in 2005, and Ms. Maldonado and their 16-year-old son, Randy, who participated in the killing, were arrested. Rather than face jury trials for murder, they accepted plea bargains that sent Randy to jail for 75 months and his mother for 10 years.
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