Movie Review:
By Nick Squires, Rome
7:00AM GMT 22 Feb 2011
Amanda Knox, the American student accused of stabbing to death Kercher, 21, at the climax of a drugs-fuelled sex game, was variously portrayed as a wide-eyed innocent abroad caught up in events beyond her control or a cold-hearted narcissist and sociopath.
‘Amanda Knox — Murder on Trial in Italy’ does a credible job of navigating a complex case without coming down one way or the other on whether Knox and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, are innocent or guilty.
The made-for-television movie was based on court transcripts and the reports of the British and American journalists who covered the case from the moment that Kercher’s body was discovered in Nov 2007, to the conviction of Knox and Sollecito in Dec 2009.
Knox, played by the American actress Hayden Panettiere, 21, is portrayed as a good-time girl determined to make the most of her year studying in Italy, revelling in the chance to meet men and the fact that hashish and other drugs were openly traded on the steps of Perugia’s medieval cathedral.
The film shows how she and Sollecito, 25, the earnest, good-looking son of a rich doctor, quickly became suspects in the case due to their odd behaviour — kissing and cuddling as investigators examined the crime scene and lying about turning off their mobile phones on the night of the murder.
Review, cont.
The movie depicts how Knox, 23, was subjected to a gruelling all-night interrogation by police in which, exhausted and terrified in a foreign country, she eventually implicated a Congolese bar owner as the assassin — despite the fact that he was later found to be entirely innocent.
Flashback scenes are used to explore the various accounts given by the protagonists, including one which faithfully recreates evidence given to police by Rudy Guede, the third person accused of the murder.
In scenes which will be profoundly disturbing to the family of Kercher, he is shown rushing into the Leeds University student’s bedroom after hearing a piercing scream, to find her convulsing on the floor, her throat cut and blood pouring out of the wound.
Like Knox and Kercher, Guede always protested his innocence, but was found guilty of murder and sexual assault by a Perugia court and condemned to 30 years in prison — a sentence later reduced to 16 years on appeal.