Devil’s Knot




The trial, convictions and subsequent quasi-voiding of the guilty verdicts of West Memphis, Arkansas teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley in the 1993 killings of three other, younger adolescents have already served as the basis for four high-profile documentaries, so director Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot arrives somewhat anticlimactically for those who have been gripped by the lurid true crime tale over the past two decades — a queasy, repackaged hits collection of judicial incompetence and malfeasance heaped on top of human tragedy. For those wholly unfamiliar with the case, meanwhile, it’s no less of a mixed bag. If the narrative muddle is somewhat understandable, given the many unanswered questions surrounding the terribly sad events, neither does its lack of a clear mandate gel into something heady and artistic, like a vivisection of crime’s impact on community. Instead, Egoyan’s film embraces posed and expeditious dramatic signifiers, rather than plunging more daringly into the mouth of madness. For the full, orignal review, from Paste, click here(RLJ/Image Entertainment, R, 114 minutes)