As a crisp, straightforward digest of a lurid true-crime story that sprawled over 10 years, the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox deserves credit for concision.
This swift, densely economical film by Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn may seem redundant to those who hung on every word of the case involving the title character, an American college student who was convicted of killing her British roommate while the two were exchange students in Italy in 2007.
But even those familiar with Knox's story are likely to come away from Amanda Knox with a deeper understanding of the young woman who became known as "Foxy Knoxy," and who was accused of everything from drug-fueled orgies to coldblooded murder.
Nearly a decade later, clear-eyed and reflective, she makes a compelling spokeswoman for the chaos that ensues when institutions of criminal justice and journalism favor emotion over facts.
Aside from the present-day interviews with the subject - now living in seeming normalcy in Seattle - Amanda Knox doesn't cover that much new ground. Revisiting the horrible events of Nov. 2, 2007, the film reviews how Knox arrived in Italy as an optimistic 20-year-old; how she met her roommate Meredith Kercher and boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito; how she and Sollecito discovered the crime scene; and, in part because they were "inappropriately" kissing and hugging each other in front of police, how they came to be accused of stabbing Kercher to death with a kitchen knife.
