Documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky who uncovered the unbelievable and disturbing with their 1992 release "Brother's Keeper", and who would go on to helm the metal-head therapy session that was the riveting "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster" gathered two and a half hours of unsettling and disconcerting evidence of the holes in the U.S. justice system with "Paradise Lost: the Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills". The film conveys the events that followed a gruesome triple murder of second grade boys just outside a small Arkansas town.
This case led to the quick rounding up of three teenage male suspects: a highly diffident and low-functioning seventeen-year-old, a quiet pimple-faced sixteen-year-old, and a highly intelligent black haired Wiccan of eighteen. Berlinger and Sinofsky's film presents a very balanced story with equal time given to the grieving families and the prosecuting attorneys as well as the suspects and their families and the defense attorneys. The peek we are given inside the justice system as shown through actual footage from the courtroom, and from meetings within the respective legal chambers offer the audience an unusually involved role in the proceedings. This is powerful and unnerving film-making!
This case led to the quick rounding up of three teenage male suspects: a highly diffident and low-functioning seventeen-year-old, a quiet pimple-faced sixteen-year-old, and a highly intelligent black haired Wiccan of eighteen. Berlinger and Sinofsky's film presents a very balanced story with equal time given to the grieving families and the prosecuting attorneys as well as the suspects and their families and the defense attorneys. The peek we are given inside the justice system as shown through actual footage from the courtroom, and from meetings within the respective legal chambers offer the audience an unusually involved role in the proceedings. This is powerful and unnerving film-making!