After four feature-length documentaries on the subject, one might reasonably assume the cinematic potential of the West Memphis Three story has pretty much been depleted. But none of those prior films featured Reese Witherspoon, so here’s Devil’s Knot, in which Canadian director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica) dramatizes the 1994 case of three Arkansas teens—now grown, free men—convicted of a triple homicide they almost certainly didn’t commit. Though technically based on Mara Leveritt’s non-fiction book about the trial, Devil’s Knot restages much of the material seen in the first Paradise Lost film, casting Witherspoon as grieving mother Pam Hobbs, Alessandro Nivola as her husband Terry Hobbs, Colin Firth as private-investigator Ron Fax, and several other familiar faces, all playing faces who will be familiar to anyone who followed the case since the mid-’90s. The film will begin trickling into U.S. theaters in May.
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