The real mystery of this Tru-Crime story (three young boys bike into the woods and never come out) is how it became, as the Tie-In paperbacks used to say, ‘Now a Major Motion Picture!’, and not a run-of-the-mill DATELINE or 48 HOURS tv investigation. With A-list Oscar’d stars and everything, still one of those $15 mill pics that lose 40 mill. Who ‘green-lights’ these things? Reese Witherspoon is fine, I suppose, as one of the moms fearing the worst; and Colin Firth perhaps thought trying on a Southern accent would make a nice challenge. (The accent also fine, I suppose.) But director Atom Egoyan has little feel (or luck) finding humanity in one of those in-bred God-fearin’/Satan-obsessed Southern communities where Church sermons thunder against the morals of ‘youth culture’ and some quickly located teens and layabout 20-somethings call themselves Wiccans and confess to crimes . . . then recant. Firth, an investigator helping a pair of lawyers working pro bono fights the good fight with scant motivation against a biased judge and a lynch-minded community. Neither Firth nor film raising much of a sweat in this bright, shiny, antiseptic looking town. Previously covered in books & documentaries (the events happened in 1993), it’s hard to see the purpose here.* A sentiment seconded by film distributors who gave this an extremely limited release. Then, right at the end, what ought to have been the film’s last two acts are inadequately laid out for us on title-cards (four or five paragraphs’ worth of them) filling in a race to justice and a long delayed Get-Out-of-Jail-Free twist (without exoneration/unable to sue the State of Arkansas) that might have made a more interesting film.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *IMDb lists four documentaries: WEST OF MEMPHIS/’12, PARADISE LOST: THE CHILD MURDERS AT ROBIN HOOD HILLS/‘96, PARADISE LOST 2: REVELATIONS/‘00, and PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY/‘11. (none seen here)
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