This film fails because the script is no good. Despite all the excellent efforts of Reese Witherspoon as the female lead, and the well known directing skills of Atom Egoyan, the three script writers have created a bowl of porridge. The story concerns three young boys who go missing in a dank wood called Devil's Den, which is found at the dead end of a normal street of a suburban town in America called West Memphis, Arkansas. (Apparently there was a real such case in that town, which inspired this film, if one could call it inspired, that is.) There are the usual twists and turns and suspicions and paranoia which one would expect in such a tale. But the story rambles. Colin Firth appears in the film but does not have much to do but cast wistful looks at Reese Witherspoon in the courtroom, which is all the more pointless in that he does most of this before she even knows who he is. But we also never really know who he is, as he seems to have been stuck onto the story as a kind of extra, in order to get him squeezed into the film somehow. The story could have gone on without him just as well. So, because he is such a good actor, Colin Firth when he does essentially nothing in this film, he does it excellently. I could not help feeling that this mediocre film was, frankly, exploitationist.
Review of Devil's Knot
