CONVICTION (Tony Goldwyn). 106 minutes. Opens Friday (October 15). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
If you were wondering when Hollywood would get around to making more pandering, easily digested legal procedurals like The Hurricane, your long wait is over.
Tony Goldwyn’s pedestrian Conviction takes the undeniably powerful true story of Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank), who put herself through law school and spent nearly two decades fighting to clear her brother (Sam Rockwell) of a murder conviction, and reduces it to a mundane movie-of-the-week.
Goldwyn, usually a much better filmmaker, stages every scene as a potential Oscar clip, exhorting his actors to go bigger and broader with Pamela Gray’s blunt script, which is the sort of heavy-handed construction that can’t go five minutes without having a secondary character remind Waters how courageous and self-sacrificing she is for giving up her life for her brother. The only pushback comes from Rockwell, whose bipolar character becomes the rock to which the audience can cling, and Melissa Leo, who puts a great deal of depth into a very shallow character.
The problem is, neither Rockwell nor Leo is the focus of the film. It’s all about Swank, who’s dour and mechanical even when the movie gives her Peter Gallagher’s Barry Scheck (yes, that Barry Scheck) as a sidekick.
