Z/Web

I recorded this Lifetime TV movie over two years ago, but hadn’t watched it. Recently I watched the real Amanda Knox interviewed on a news show and it revived my interest in the case and this movie. It was fascinating seeing some of the tiny details she talked about in her interview show up in the film — stuff I hadn’t remembered, such as her performing “gymnastics” while at the police station (she claimed she was growing stiff from sitting still for so long and just needed to stretch and exercise, while the prosecution tried to use that against her, saying she was callous and unfeeling over the death of her roommate).

Overall, while this film isn’t exactly going to set the world on fire in terms of acting and writing, it’s surprisingly good. There were a few odd moments that seemed poorly done and I would have done those differently, but mostly it seemed faithful to the events we know about from the trials. I was particularly impressed by how this showed some scenes from the prosecution’s perspective, allowing us to see how they perceived the crime and how they came to the conclusions they did. I feared this might be an all-out “Amanda’s Innocent!” or “Amanda’s Guilty!” preachy sort of film, but it’s well-balanced and critical of both Amanda and the prosecution.

A good example of this is that my impression of the case was that Amanda was a suspect almost immediately — which always seemed odd to me. But this movie had the prosecution only turning to Amanda after finding some inconsistencies in her story and some other people pointing the finger at her, which seems more reasonable.

The film does lean toward Amanda’s innocence — a view I share after seeing her conviction eventually overturned (remember, this movie was made years before those recent developments). It also makes Amanda seem more composed and intelligent than makes sense considering what happened (she definitely made several poor decisions both before and after the murder) — she was just a naive 20-year-old at the time and assumed the police were on her side.

In the end, I came away with a better understanding of how all this mess happened. I find the case fascinating, both from having lived overseas and knowing how easy miscommunication can be involving other cultures and languages, and from a general societal perspective. Definitely a film worth checking out if you’re interested in the story.