Review of Devil's Knot (2013) by Cath O — 13 Jun 2014

Knew absolutely nothing going in to this apart from it starred Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth. As a Friday night unwinding bit of relaxation, this was hopeless! Grim, depressing and pretty tedious, it tells the story of murder of 3 little boys and the teens convicted of the crime mainly for being goths and listening to heavy metal amid accusations of Satanism.

In many ways, the film's plot is a metaphor for this film. Loads of fantastic actors - Firth, Witherspoon, Mereille Enos, Bruce Greenwood, Dane Dehaan, Stephen Moyer, Amy Ryan, Alessandro Nivola and classy director Atom Egoyan should all be clues to a good film. Sounds like a winner?

In the movie, the terrible taste in clothes, music and truly criminal haircuts (a ginger mullet? Must be a pervert killer!) police incompetence and the Bible Belt hysteria of the small town Memphis community means there is no proper investigation, no CSI clue hunting here.

What should have been a gripping portrait of injustice, instead focuses on an oddly charisma-free Reese Witherspoon and an also oddly charmless Colin Firth. Half of the plot is told in those annoying onscreen 'here's what happened later' notices at the end of the film. More than anything though this is NOT an entertaining or fun film. No interesting character development, no real answers to this real life horrific event. Moral of the story, don't see a film based on its cast! Reese and Colin, you let me down!