Devil's knot - our review

Atom Egoyan explores the dark side of America’s most bigoted

A famous American news story is at the center of the new film by Atom Egoyan , Devil’s Knot – Until proven otherwise . The film, starring Colin Firth , Reese Witherspoon , Alessandro Nivola, Bruce Greenwood and rising star Dane DeHaan ( here our video interview Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ), tells of the brutal murder of three children occurred West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1993. Their bodies were found in a river, arms and legs tied with laces of their shoes. Police are investigating evil and superficially, and eventually charged and convicted three local teenagers. But a private investigator (Firth) does not believe the official version, and began a parallel investigation.

By exploiting the structure of the classical legal thriller, Egoyan tells a dark story, overwhelming, the darker side of America’s bigoted and ignorant, ready to a witch hunt is just irrational evoked the word “Satanism”. Between the lines of a movie setting is not too original, reads thus a reflection on how the ancestral fears can still transform the man into an animal driven only by instinct of self-preservation. And there is also the non-trivial speech sull’allarmismo linked to satanic cults, whose existence has never been proven. A lesson that applies to our country, where cases in the news as one of the Beasts of Satan monsters have generated the most disturbing cases themselves: newspaper articles and TV services deployed, which have spread misinformation, clichés (the “youth of today”, the musical metal) and fear rather than stick to the facts.

The film, at times, threatens to get bogged down in a narrative a bit ‘slow, but the ability to create atmosphere Egoyan solves the problem. The director creates some powerful shots, like the scene where the three victims Designated venture into the woods, walking with bicycles by hand on a pipe that acts as a bridge over a stream. In. There is the classic American imagery, but also a sense of horror that can not postpone the masterpiece of Stephen King, It

Witherspoon and Firth are the engines of the story: both give great trials, the first in the role of the mother of one of the three boys killed, whose point of view is gradually eroded by the lack of evidence to support the accusation. The second, as mentioned, plays Ron Lax, a private investigator with a divorce behind, a silent but determined, in the best tradition of film noir.

Devil’s Knot – Until the contrary is proved, to be released on May 8, is distributed by Notorious Pictures.

Devil's knot - our review