WEST OF MEMPHIS

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Benefiting greatly from documentary work of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, whose trilogy of “Paradise Lost” series helped free the “West Memphis Three,” documentarian Amy Berg takes up the baton to push for justice in a murder mystery that still dogs the state of Arkansas.

Once again, the tragic story of three West Memphis, Arkansas teens (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley) — all wrongly convicted of molesting and murdering three young boys in 1993 — is laid out.

Nearly 20-years of hindsight allows the filmmaker a clinical precision in parsing out the well-documented facts surrounding the sordid case of grievous police and judicial misconduct.

Most significant is newly discovered evidence that points directly to Terry Hobbs, the violence-prone stepfather to one of the murdered children. A call on a public tip-line reinforces the DNA-supported premise that Terry Hobbs is the man police should have indicted. There’s no mistaking the goal of “West of Memphis” as activist cinema with Terry Hobbs in its crosshairs.

Berg widens the scope of the complex story to incorporate the wildfire of public support for Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley that became known as “the first crowd-sourced investigation in history.” Celebrates such as Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Walsh appear in surprisingly candid interview segments. Jackson and Walsh used their personal recourses to bring together a team of forensics experts to examine the evidence from the case and bring their findings to the office of the State’s medical witness who testified during the hearings. Rock singer Eddie Vedder articulates his enduring support for the three innocent men.

“West of Memphis” anchors its narrative arc in the satisfying freedom of its subjects through the use of an arcane legal construct known as the Alford plea. Indeed, Damien Echols and his wife Lorri Davis are given a “producers” credit. With “West of Memphis” being released alongside Ken Burns’s similarly themed documentary of injustice “The Central Park Five,” there is heightened scrutiny being applied to America’s judicial system.

The films seem to signal a widespread demand for an overhaul of a broken judicial system. “West of Memphis” is part of a sea change in the way that cinema stimulates social change. There is nowhere to hide.

Rated R. 146 mins.