Directed by Tony Goldwyn. Starring Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver, Melissa Leo, Juliette Lewis, Peter Gallagher 15A cert, gen release, 107 min
IN 1983, BETTY Anne Waters, a young working-class mum from Massachusetts, was devastated when her hotheaded older brother Kenny was handed down a life sentence for first degree murder.
Certain that her brother could not have committed the crime, Betty Anne, a high school dropout, went back to college, then law school, for the sole purpose of fighting Kenny’s case in court. All told, she spent two decades with her nose in tracts on criminal law under the tutelage of attorney Barry Scheck, a well-known legal equaliser from the Innocence Project.
You know it's Oscar season when likely candidates for the "Greatest Actor of Their Generation" sash all club together on a well-meaning, liberal-leaning True Life Story. In this spirit, Convictionenlists three very fine performers for what ought to be a winning underdog drama.
To that end, two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank adopts a brave face and Boston brogue as the determined Betty Anne. But Sam Rockwell has far too little to do as the mostly incarcerated Kenny, and Frozen River's Melissa Leo, playing the bent copper who would prove crucial to the case, has even less to work with.
The film's lopsidedness doesn't end there. Like Hurricane and countless other life-affirming showboats, Convictioncan't quite condense the sprawling time frame and shifting incidentals into a pleasing movie shape. Indeed, if it weren't for the greying of Sam Rockwell's hair, the events depicted here might have taken a month or a year or a parsec for all we know.
Too often, the plodding drama is entirely reliant on the thespian clout of its cast to muddle their way through flat characterisation and murky narrative progression. Sure enough, it’s hard to argue with Swank thundering, “I will never accept it.”
If only Juliette Lewis had been paying attention when she saw the script. Her unintentionally hilarious role as a white trash drunk, a key witness in the trial, seems to have crawled out from under a Rob Schneider picture. Oh dear.
