Conviction

Movie Information

The Story: A fact-based story of a woman who put herself through law school in order to attempt to get her brother out of prison on a wrongful murder conviction. The Lowdown: A very serious-minded, extremely earnest and probably well-intended film that is somehow less compelling than it should be.
Score:

Genre: Fact-Based Drama
Director: Tony Goldwyn (The Last Kiss)
Starring: Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver, Juliette Lewis, Melissa Leo, Peter Gallagher
Rated: R

Tony Goldwyn’s Conviction is exactly what you would expect: a high-minded, fact-based, super-earnest, drama-thon, with an attempt at an uplifting, soul-stirring ending. That is both what’s wrong with the film and why it will appeal strongly to viewers who like their drama thick and earnest, and believe that affecting a working-class accent is the ultimate test of an actor’s ability. I cannot say that Conviction is a bad film as such. It’s competently made. It’s well acted, though not outstandingly so—despite the Oscar buzz surrounding Sam Rockwell, who is good, but has been better. I knew what was going to happen from the trailers—because I’ve been to the movies a few times—and that’s exactly what the movie delivers. I wasn’t moved, my soul wasn’t shaken, and I wasn’t uplifted. The best I can say is I mostly didn’t mind sitting through it.

In case you don’t know, the film is based on the story of Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank), a working-class mom whose brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) is sent to prison for life without parole for a murder he claims he didn’t commit. Betty believes in his innocence, so she gets her GED and puts herself through college and law school in order to clear his name. Yes, it’s a remarkable tale of sibling devotion, but in the hands of screenwriter Pamela Gray and director Tony Goldwyn, I simply didn’t find it remarkable drama. The film is at a disadvantage, I admit, simply because the outcome is only going to surprise people who went to see Titanic (1997) and were shocked when the ship sank. Let’s face it, a movie like Conviction, which positions itself as an uplifting true story, isn’t about to deliver anything but a crowd-pleaser ending where virtue triumphs.

The central flaw with the film, from my perspective, is its lack of attention to the whole legal process that sends Kenny to jail; it also fails to establish any real connection between Betty’s law degree and getting Kenny’s conviction overturned. The way the film plays out, virtually every legal maneuver that comes into play is the work of Betty’s classmate Abra (Minnie Driver) or Project Innocence lawyer Barry Scheck (Peter Gallagher). Apart from setting things into motion, Betty’s major contribution lies in convincing a county employee to look for trial records that are thought to have been destroyed years earlier.

The movie seems to be afraid to get too involved in the legal side of things. Kenny’s original trial is given short shrift, and yet it’s presented as such an obvious railroading that it’s hard not to wonder why no one seemed to notice this at the time. My guess is that the filmmakers didn’t trust the audience to have the patience for anything but the broadest of broad strokes. At the same time, the film really wants to hammer home the bond between Betty and Kenny—to the extent of including some clunky childhood scenes that don’t really add much to the film. Still, that’s the tack they’ve chosen to take and it may work for some viewers. It certainly worked for Bold Life movie reviewer Marcianne Miller, who watched the film with me. She found it very engaging.

Personally, I saw an interesting story that felt like it had been smoothed out into a simplified, sanitized work that existed mostly to afford Swank and Rockwell a series of big dramatic scenes—though they’re largely the same basic scenes repeated—in order to court Oscar voters. (I think it stands a better chance of succeeding with Rockwell than Swank.) I also found the film’s ending, with its series of titles informing the viewer of what happened afterwards, to be disingenuous. I understand why the filmmakers chose not to tell the rest of Kenny’s story, but I think they ought to have let the movie stand on its own without the titles. I won’t give away what the film chooses to leave alone, but I will say I think it was handled poorly. Rated R for language and some violent images.

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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4 thoughts on “Conviction

  1. I also found the film’s ending, with its series of titles informing the viewer of what happened afterwards, to be disingenuous.
    I positively loathe this trope and wish filmmakers would stop using it. If there’s more story you needed to tell, why did you end the film there?
    CASABLANCA doesn’t end with a bunch of titles telling us what happened to Rick Blaine after the fade out. BECAUSE THE MOVIE IS OVER!

  2. Ken Hanke

    CASABLANCA doesn’t end with a bunch of titles telling us what happened to Rick Blaine after the fade out. BECAUSE THE MOVIE IS OVER!

    Well, the comparison isn’t quite fair because Rick Blaine is a fictional character. Nothing happened to him after the movie was over because there wasn’t any him. The only time I’ve seen the approach used with fiction was for comedic — and usually lame — effect like the ending of Billy Wilder’s rather unfortunate 1974 version of The Front Page.

    I don’t mind it on fact-based films on general principles. I think it works just fine on Ed Wood and Nowhere Boy for a couple of random examples. My problem with Conviction is that it deliberately doesn’t tell you what happened next to Kenny Waters, because it would screw up the movie’s uplifting mood.

  3. DrSerizawa

    Why lay out a film about a lanky likeable level-headed lady learning her letters to lead the life of a lawyer and then not load it with lots of luminous scenes of the lady doing lustrous lawyerly legal things? Seems pretty lame. Will Hilary loom large in the lay of the Oscar landscape? Will she be lucky? Will her lust for an Oscar be lopped off by the lowly loveless lumpen lowlifes of the Academy? Will she lurch to lustrous victory? Or lurk lugubriously in the shadows? We’ll learn next year.

  4. Ken Hanke

    Will Hilary loom large in the lay of the Oscar landscape? Will she be lucky? Will her lust for an Oscar be lopped off by the lowly loveless lumpen lowlifes of the Academy? Will she lurch to lustrous victory? Or lurk lugubriously in the shadows? We’ll learn next year.

    Well, we can prognisticate now. And my guess is neither the film, nor her performance is sufficiently well-regarded for Oscarfication. There is, however, a chance that Sam Rockwell might get an Oscar out of this.

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