I had no knowledge of this story before watching this film, so I won't judge it as harshly as maybe some others on the facts. I particular liked the opening of the movie right before the boys disappeared and Reese Witherspoon gave off a great performance as the grieving mother. She is a big reason why I enjoyed this movie more than maybe I should do. There are questions raised as to whether she should have had as much screen time as she did, however it just gave me that much more sympathy for her to get the justice she deserves. That particularly hair pulling scene was powerful. From the end tags, it is obvious there was a lot more to this case than what we actually saw. Colin Firth did not do a whole for me, I wished to have seen more reasoning behind him and better understand his character. He felt more like an observer than anything. Same goes with the 3 suspects who did not get as much screen time as I had hoped. At first, it did seem likely the police had the right people, especially with a confession from one of them, but the film slowly took a dig at the police because they never investigated anyone else, they didn't file all the evidence and said some of it was misplaced. Was that down to laziness or incompetence? They didn't completely hate on the police in this movie, but they did have a small dig. Despite many problems I did have, I do think the movie was quite suspenseful at times and it is a well shot movie. The movie does move at quite a slow pace, but I can't say I was ever bored watching the courtroom stuff.

6/10