This film documents actor Miranda Harcourt touring her stage play Verbatim (created by William Brandt and Harcourt) around New Zealand prisons. The play is a six-character monologue made up of accounts of violent crime, all performed by Harcourt on a minimalist set. Director Shirley Horrocks captures the profound reactions of prison inmates watching a version of their own lives unfold on stage. Harcourt’s powerful performance is mixed with revealing testimonies from inmates and mothers and siblings of inmates who agreed to be interviewed. Act of Murder won a prize at New Zealand's first Media Peace Awards in 1993.