It's not just about these kids. It's about everybody. It's about the concern as a community.
Considering how much coverage the case of the West Memphis Three has received over the past two decades, it's reasonable to believe that the "Based on a True Story" caption at the beginning of Devil's Knot is probably superfluous. Directed by Atom Egoyan and based on the book Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Mara Leveritt, the film itself may seem superfluous in light of the four documentaries that have been made about the same subject, beginning with 1996's Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, but it's the only dramatization of the events we're ever likely to get. And it's a far sight better than Egoyan's last feature, the laughably overwrought Chloe.
The film opens on May 5, 1993, the day that three boys went missing in the woods near their homes in West Memphis, Arkansas, leading police and volunteers to scour the area in a manner that recalls the interludes in Egoyan's Exotica, released the following year. As in that film, the search ends with the discovery of their dead bodies, which galvanizes the authorities, leading to the swift arrests and prosecution of three teenagers in spite of the fact that the evidence against them is entirely circumstantial. When the death penalty is sought for all three suspects, private investigator Ron Lax (Colin Firth, previously seen in Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies) offers his services to the defense pro bono, thus embroiling himself in one of the most maddening cases he's likely to come across.
Another perspective is provided by Pam Hobbs (Reese Witherspoon), the mother of one of the murdered boys, who goes to pieces fairly early on and doesn't get much help from her husband Terry (Alessandro Nivola) putting them back together. Meanwhile, the three defendants -- Damien Echols (James Hamrick), Jason Baldwin (Seth Meriwether), and Jessie Misskelley (Kris Higgins) -- are up against the widespread belief that they carried out the murders as part of a Satanic ritual, largely because they listened to heavy metal and Damien had an interest in the occult. (Egoyan regular Elias Koteas has a great walk-on as Damien's probation officer, who lectures on the connection between heavy metal and Satanism, and Bruce Greenwood has a meaty role as the judge in the case who tips the proceedings entirely in the favor of the prosecutors.)
As miscarriages of justice go, the treatment of the West Memphis Three is most egregious, but since they've been reduced to the status of supporting players in their own story, we don't get too hung up on their fates as individuals. What's more sobering is the realization -- driven home by the closing title cards that reveal just how many loose ends haven't been tied up -- that the law never did apprehend the actual person (or persons) responsible for the heinous crimes they were accused of. At this late date, that seems highly unlikely.