Metacritic reviews

The case is revisited with painstaking detail, and a riveting picture emerges once again about misunderstood outsiders.

Far from being overkill, the well-conceived drama featuring A-listers Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth in key roles, will bring this infuriating tale of injustice to many mainstream moviegoers for the first time.

Well-intentioned but emotionally straitjacketed.

What’s most frustrating about Devil’s Knot—especially for longtime Egoyan fans—is how generic the movie becomes every time it folds another wrinkle into the case.

Egoyan musters some of the power he brought to The Sweet Hereafter, another lost-children tale, but little of the lyric beauty or sense of a community coming unglued.

Rather than thrilling, the courtroom sequences seem only enervating, nudging us toward a quiet outrage.

Devil’s Knot only occasionally feels weightier than a high-end Lifetime original or “Law & Order” episode.

Atom Egoyan is a much better director when he drops the art-film fanciness and wrestles directly with his inner voyeuristic weirdo.

Devil's Knot lacks potency or a compelling narrative reason why anyone remotely familiar with the case needs to be watching it.

It reduces a complex and extraordinary case to soap. It makes you care less, for all its heavy-breathing and cheapo coaxing.