I watched the Paradise Lost documentaries in
a single day, almost by accident. I was on vacation with no plans for the day
and stumbled across the first one on a streaming site. I'd heard about the
movie and was in the mood for a documentary, so I started it. I didn't get out
of my seat for another 6 hours until I'd finished all three movies, covering
the nearly 20 year journey of the grisly murders and the young men who were
convicted of the crime, only to later be "cleared" of the charges*.
It's a very captivating story of "satanic panic" in a small town run
amok. It's filled with interesting characters and a mystery that remains
unsolved. HBO's Paradise Lost series got in at the ground level fairly
early and stayed with it for years. I still want to see the documentary West
of Memphis, which steam lines the whole story into a single documentary as
opposed to 3 parts released years apart.
*I won't get into the details, but they were let out
of prison because they were innocent, but through a quirk in the law, they had to technically plead guilty. Our legal
system is really dumb, sometimes.
What this story
didn't need was a movie. It's a tough story to tell that way. That's because
it's two stories that actually aren't very connected. There's the murder of the
three boys, which focuses on the parents and the search for the killers. Then
there's the story of the three young men who were charged with the murders and
wrongly convicted. Attempting to tell both stories ends up shorting both.
The movie tries
very hard to connect all the storylines using Colin Firth as private
investigator Ron Lax. I don't know if Lax is a real person or an amalgam of a
few individuals, but his role in the movie is very functional. He's the person
they can put in the most rooms to observe things. The movie feels the need to
use Reese Witherspoon more than the story requires. I think the better version
of this movie gets to know the West Memphis Three better and focuses more on
their trial. But then the problem is that it takes 18 years for them to get
their happy ending. And that happy ending still leaves them in jail for half
their lives. There are just too many characters, too much time to cover, and
too many loose ends for this to work as a movie.
The nods to the Paradise
Lost movies are funny in a clunky sort of way. I love the scene when
Firth's character talks to one of the filmmakers of the documentary as they are
packing their equipment up for the day. I feel like they just inserted that
into the screenplay at the last minute because some producer said, "You
know, you have to at least acknowledge the documentary. It's a key part of the
story". Oh, and there's the John Mark Byers question. That man is an
insane character. Too much of him risks taking over the movie (just look at the
second Paradise Lost documentary). In Devil's Knot, he's just a
weird guy off to the side, but I kept waiting for him to take focus.
I don't know what
to make of Devil's Knot. It plays like a handsomely-dressed TV movie, but with
two Oscar winners still in their primes at the center (Witherspoon and Firth),
not to mention former Oscar nominee Amy Ryan in a nothing role. I assume it was
an Oscar hopeful at some point in its development, even if by its release date,
those hopes were long gone. The final product is too dispassionate. It tries to
remove itself from the events and observe the story. A more focused approach
would've worked better, I think. I would be curious about how it plays for
people not familiar with the actual story or any of the documentaries.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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