Movie Review: Conviction

It’s Oscar season, the time when serious directors and actors release serious movies in the hopes that their brilliance will attract the attention of the nomination committee. Thus, we get “Conviction,” a film about a woman’s 18 year struggle to free her innocent brother from a life sentence for murder.

Two time Oscar winner Hillary Swank headlines “Conviction” as Betty Ann Waters. Her funny and incorrigible brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) is little more than a bar brawler and ne’er-do-well. He’s certainly not a cold blooded killer. She tells this to the police when they pick him up for a gruesome murder of a neighbor and she keeps telling the lawyers, judges, and investigators assigned his case. She might as well be talking to a brick wall.

When he’s convicted and sentenced to life, Betty Ann enters into a permanent state of panic. Kenny is in prison and she knows it’s wrong. She cannot understand why no one shares her sense of urgency. Neither her husband, the lawyers, nor the bureaucrats that store the evidence used to convict him seem to care that a man is wrongly in jail. Living with daily desperation, she completes her G.E.D., earns a bachelor’s degree, and finishes law school. Once she passes the bar, she can force the system to reexamine Kenny’s case.

The movie works best when Swank and Rockwell find that peculiar chemistry between siblings who adore each other. Swank does a good job depicting the desperation that becomes Betty Ann’s daily companion and motivation. The bulk of the film, however, is less compelling than it should be given the subject. Maybe it’s that we already know, or at least strongly suspect, that Betty Ann will be victorious in the end. Perhaps it’s that the other characters, from the corrupt police officer to the crusading lawyer to the hostile husband, feel flat and unoriginal.

There is much to admire in Betty Ann Waters. However, “Conviction” doesn’t reach the level of “The Blind Side,” which made us want to be Leigh Ann Touhey, or at a minimum, become a member of the Touhey family. “Conviction,” an equally powerful story about a wrong committed and then righted, makes us less attracted. If I’m ever in trouble I’d want Betty Ann on my side, but I’m not sure I’d want to have a beer with Swank’s Betty Ann. People who care a lot about social justice will like the movie. 

The rest of us will see something to admire, but won’t fall in love.

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