Conviction (Review)

I’ve never been as high on Hilary Swank as other people. This does not mean she is a bad actress, in fact she’s quite good, but I’m afraid I have to disagree with the people who call her the greatest actress of her generation. I’m afraid that at some level there is an artificiality to some of her performances, as if at any point she could break the fourth wall and start begging the Academy for a nomination. It was taken to a perverse extreme with last year’s utterly ignored Amelia, which to me ranks up there with casting Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela: it just seems too easy, really. For me the best performances are the result of actors who don’t seem to be doing it just for the accolades, which is never a feeling I get with Ms. Swank.

To a degree, this continues with Conviction, the new drama in which Swank finds herself playing Betty Anne Waters, a determined woman who devotes her entire life to getting her brother out of prison after he is wrongfully convicted of murder. Over the course of 20 years Waters earns her GED, a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and finally a law degree. Along the way she hits many roadblocks, but so strong is her CONVICTION that she refuses to stop until her brother’s CONVICTION is overturned.

At the end of the day this is a story that is normally reserved for at 8pm Saturday night slot on Lifetime, but I give Conviction credit for adding a small amount of grit to the proceedings so that it merits a theatrical release, but it never reaches its full potential. The film bounces between scenes of R-rated material and overblown sentimentality so frequently that I didn’t know if I was watching Secondhand Lions or The Shawshank Redemption. Betty Anne is a woman who will bite your head off if you even so much as suggest that perhaps her brother is guilty, and that is a character trait that is too glossed over. Instead of a Zodiac-like study of obsession, this film settles for a more obvious route.

The best performance in Conviction comes courtesy of Sam Rockwell, who plays Betty Anne’s imprisoned brother Kenny. He has a nasty habit of starring in films that just aren’t as good as his performances are, and here he is again bringing energy to material that has none. Conviction is at its best when examining what makes him tick, and as such we know why he went to prison in the first place. Everything else you’ve seen a million times before.

What cannot be disputed is the strength of the story, which definitely deserved to be immortalized in movie form, but by people who weren’t interested in draining the life out of it. Director Tony Goldwyn brings too much of his television sensibility to the proceedings, and as such it is only the actors who make the film seem cinematic at all. Betty Anne is a freak of a human being whose determination is irrational, and we never really get a reason for her preoccupation with the case. Perhaps it is because she never considers there is another option, but as a whole she is a character whose mind is awfully hard to penetrate.

Conviction delivers what you’d expect from it in a package that’s as tidy as possible, and despite the occasional signs of potential it never truly delves beneath the surface. These characters exist to function as the story mandates them to and with little reason. Here is a movie that tells a worthwhile true-life story, but leaves out all the details that would make any of it ring true. Clichéd stories can be told in a riveting and entertaining way (see: Secretariat) but Conviction settles with being just another film about a determined woman on a mission.

Rating:(out of 4)