Well-Made Amanda Knox Comes to the Obvious Conclusion

As befitting one of the most talked-about crimes of the past decade, the Meredith Kercher murder and ensuing Amanda Knox saga are the subject of a new true-crime documentary. Amanda Knox, released Friday on Netflix, has a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It opens with Knox herself looking at the camera and stating: "Either I'm a psychopath in sheep's clothing, or I am you." It goes on to recount Knox—an American college student in Italy—being twice convicted and acquitted of killing her roommate, Kercher, over a span of eight years. Here's what the critics are saying about Amanda Knox:

• RogerEbert.com says Amanda Knox won't change anyone's mind about her, but it shows how a "seemingly sweet naive girl was accused of something she didn't do" and "how something like this could happen to anyone."
• The film also helps explain how Knox was so easily turned into a "tabloid villainess," according to the Wall Street Journal. "It’s the curse of our media-driven age that anyone seeking a sympathetic hearing needs to have a convincingly sympathetic persona."
• Entertainment Weekly calls Amanda Knox a good refresher "for everyone who lost track of the trials, appeals, and independent investigations amid tabloid tales of a sex-torture party gone wrong."
• The Guardian laments that the conclusion the film reaches is the obvious one: "The Italian police and judiciary were guilty of grotesque incompetence, panic, misogyny, and misplaced national pride" resulting in their turning Knox into an "evil witch."
• Amanda Knox—"equal parts Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith"—seems to be "the last word in this most divisive of cases," the Los Angeles Times writes.
• "Like too many recent documentaries, [Amanda Knox] is filled with missed opportunities," according to the Village Voice. Those missed opportunities include too little time spent on Knox's time in prison or with the lawyer of Rudy Guede, the man eventually convicted of Kercher's murder.

(More Amanda Knox stories.)