West Of Memphis (Amy Berg, 2012): New Zealand

Reviewed by Charles Starr Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival.

West of Memphis begins with the heinous murder of three eight year old boys and then with the trial of the three young men held responsible for the crime, later dubbed the West Memphis Three.  The prosecutions’ arguments as to their guilt are quickly presented along with a confession by one of the young men (Jessie Misskelley), a witness claiming having seen the young men attend satanic cult rituals which could be used as an explanation for the wounds on the victims, and a general distaste for the Three, and that was that.  Two life sentences and a death sentence were handed down and the Three were imprisoned.

In the two and a half hours of details and investigative work to follow, we learn that these young men played no part in the crime, were wrongfully imprisoned for eighteen years (a combined fifty four years of their lives) and, most importantly, how greatly the justice system in Arkansas failed them.  With many experts from around the globe called in to reexamine the arguments and evidence, and much time spent doing so, we learn that everything used against these young men, now in their early thirties, was falsified, lied about (under oath!), or came out of complete incompetence.  With all of this in addition to exonerating DNA evidence that the Three were nowhere near the crime scene but that in fact a family member of one of the victims’ may have been, The West Memphis Three were finally released from prison.

We are presented this information many ways: through interviews with supporters, the filmmakers, and one of the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols, through followed stories of support, belief and perseverance throughout the years, through explanations of the means used to prove that these men were in fact innocent, and through a review of what was presented in court to damn these men and the sheer negligence and ulterior motives that allowed these things to be construed as actual evidence.  As documentaries go, although it is never possible for a film to be completely unbiased, West Of Memphis seemed more to present facts and evidence enough to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusion without imposing the filmmakers’ viewpoints in regards to the innocence of the West Memphis Three.

Something people should take away from this film is the fact that our justice system is flawed to the extent that three young men can be handed a life or even a death sentence due to the political agenda of several greedy men and that the blurring of  lines occurs even today that can turn misunderstood young men who don’t quite fit into the mainstream into murderers in the eyes of a jury based simply on what they are told in a court of law.  This is not justice- and West Of Memphis does a great service in bringing this important and ubiquitous issue to the public.