Sadly Over-hyped

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This is the first Lifetime movie I have seen. If the quality of "Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy" is any indication, I have misjudged this oft disparaged enterprise. It is respectable entertainment, written with a decent sense of dramatic tension and cast with a good eye for accurate representation. With the exception of the actors playing Rudy Guede and Patrick Lumumba, much of the cast looks the part and many bring a certain skill to their roles. The use of Italian scenery is a bonus. I like the careful line the movie walks; never spelling out exactly what happened and allowing Amanda to seem both sympathetic and possibly complicit. Marcia Gay Harden nails her scenes as Amanda's fretful mother, and the movie manages to make the Italian police seem reasonable in their suspicion. All in all, this is an entertaining movie that adds another dimension to this over-exposed case.

Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy (2011) ** (out of 4) American girl Amanda Knox (Hayden Panettiere) travels to Italy to study but soon she's accused of murdering her roommate with the assistance of her boyfriend and another guy. Soon Knox's sex life and strange behavior become the key evidence in the trial, which she's convicted of but many seem to think a crooked Prosecutor is to blame. I first heard of this case soon after the real events happened and I remember that for the next year or so every media group was on the side that pointed the finger of guilt at Amanda. I lost track of the case until 60 Minutes did another episode on it and to my shock now everyone was saying that the girl was innocent and being framed by a questionable Prosecutor. This made-for-TV drama from Lifetime doesn't try to pretend to be a documentary and instead it purely wants to show that Amanda is innocent but for some strange reason the movie is never able to do this. There's no doubt that the intent behind this movie is to say that the Italian courts are full of evil people wanting to harm this angel-faced girl from Seattle but I personally need a lot more than just this. Not once are we ever really given an explanation for why Knox is innocent other than the Italians are bad people. This doesn't work for a number of reasons but the biggest one, in terms of this film, is that the Italian members are constantly made to give evil looks to the camera and after a while this just becomes laughable and it's a rather cheap way to try and make them look evil. I kept expecting the director and screenwriter to dress them all in black, put a mask on them and put knives in their hands. Another thing that doesn't work in the picture is that we never really get to understand the case, what actually happened or what might have happened. Yes, there are several re-enactments but they're all handled so poorly that you can't help but feel letdown. As with most "true story" movies, this one here changes a few facts around and tells a few lies of its own so needless to say people shouldn't be watching this thing expecting a documentary. I think the film should have tried to make its case a lot better and all in all it really does feel rushed and all over the place as if the filmmakers weren't sure what they wanted to tell or try to tell. The performances aren't too bad with Panettiere doing a nice job as Knox. I thought she was a lot better when she started to crack from the pressure and she's also quite nice when it comes time to address the courts. Vincent Riotta steals the film as the Prosecutor and Paolo Romio is good in his bit of Amanda's boyfriend. Marcia Gay Harden plays Amanda's mother and she's a tad bit too over-the-top during a few scenes. The story of Amanda Knox is far from over and let's hope a better movie will come out whenever the real story gets solved.

Please, whatever you do, do not use this movie as a means of deciding whether Amanda Knox and Rafaelle Sollecito are guilty or innocent. There are major factual errors in this movie. This movie makes the claim that a store owner identified Amanda as someone who bought bleach the morning after the murder within days of the murder. This simply is not true. That store owner did not claim Amanda was at his store until 10 months later. And he only made the claim when he was paid for an interview. Furthermore, no other evidence was ever produced to support this claim.The movie also definitively portrays Rafaelle as not calling the 112 number until after the postal police are there. Again, that is not true. The investigators reached that decision based on the clock on a nearby parking garage that was established to be about 12 minutes off.This movie plays very fast and loose with the facts. View it as enjoyable lifetime movie fluff if you will, but DO NOT decide Amanda is guilty based on this movie.

This movie promotes several gross distortions which CBS News Crimesider, for one, has identified. Example: in one scene Amanda knew too much prior to her interrogation, such as how her friend Amanda had died. CBS CrimeSider calls this one of the five biggest lies in the film. And yes, it was not in the trial either.Why was Amanda's interrogation not recorded? Why did the prosecution's forensic team not testify in the trial about any crime scene cleanup? Why did the police, while testing, destroy the hard-drives of the computer which Amanda and Raffaele said they were using that night? Why are so many other facts misreported in newspapers and TV? The movie does not answer any of those questions truthfully, or even raise them. It is mysterious. It seems to be a commercial game. Or maybe they are just "giving Amanda and Raffaele a bad time." In this movie, a blonde Italian-American Hollywood woman acts out a screenplay to portray a red-haired Scottish-American honor student from Seattle as if she were a bratty, suspicious and brazen character. Someone has friends in low places.