It’s important to have a fresh perspective on every film. With a number of films being released each week, the insight into why they were made and what they say about our society is invaluable, even if the major studios have done their part to crush the auteur theory. That is no such consolation for us regarding “Conviction,” however, a film with familiar missteps, one that fails to connect in a manner we should all be familiar with. You probably saw a “Conviction” last weekend on Showtime, and your parents will probably make you watch a “Conviction” when you visit them for the holidays.“Conviction” is an improbable true story about a union between brother and sister. Betty Anne and Kenny Waters grew up as latchkey kids, breaking into homes in their working-class Massachusetts neighborhood and gaining a reputation as troublemakers. Eventually, foster care changed both, as they took divergent paths. Betty became a self-serious family woman, marrying with two children. Kenneth apparently tried to walk the straight and narrow by peppering petty crimes around his daily lifestyle, and as such develops a relationship with local law enforcement.
This relationship proves harmful when Kenneth is taken in for a murder charge. There is limited evidence, but in the years before widespread DNA specialization, it doesn’t look promising that no one can verify Kenneth’s alibi. Two years after the murder, Kenneth is finally prosecuted. People can’t finger him at the crime scene, but they certainly know what he’s not, and with his rap sheet and cavalier demeanor, Kenneth easily goes away for a lifetime sentence. Here, Betty swears to him he’ll get him out. And that involves chasing a box.
The literal-minded film then goes about following Betty clawing her way through college and law school while caring for her two boys. Her husband is played by Loren Dean, the kind of actor who gives away his entire purpose in the film once you see his tight, humorless face in this context. He is immediately against fighting the system from the inside, for reasons we never learn, and the movie quickly sidesteps him twenty minutes in, never to be heard from again. Betty’s plan is crazy, of course, but her motivation remains clear, and it’s a symbol of the bond between the two, which would come across stronger if everyone opposing her decision wasn’t seen as an overt “bad guy” without reasonable doubt.
Once she passes the bar, the box in question is the film’s holy grail. This is the box of evidence in Kenneth’s case, significant to no lawyers in America save for Betty Anne. Unfortunately, the box itself remains shrouded in mystery -- Massachusetts state law orders the disposal of all evidence within a decade of the trial -- so Betty Anne does everything in her power to find such a box. Inflated through the prism of big screen courtroom drama, it’s meant to be a breathless battle for the truth, but it’s hard to ignore the darkly comical idea of the truth lying in a four-by-four box in a darkened room like a mystical weapon.Does she find it? We’re unsure as to what we should spoil, and so is the movie. There are difficulties within adapting true stories because you realize the audience probably has a good idea how the story resolves itself. “Conviction” throws a curve ball of questionable necessity, refusing to truly exonerate Kenneth for the murder charge. Betty is convinced of his innocence, but the audience never sees him at work, where he was during the murder, and where he left without being seen, his time card somehow vanishing. Combined with the bursts of violence and aggression from the convict, played by a volatile Sam Rockwell, the main source of suspense in the film revolves around the possibility that he’s a murderer. When the scenes without Kenneth have a flat TV feel, with mild performances and mundane administrative challenges, the realization is that this is a cheap tactic necessary to inflate a straightforward story.
Rockwell is of course the highlight of the film, but that’s become consistently true enough that it needs not to be said. His Kenneth is rambunctious and spirited, but not without a darkness. Even when he’s joking or dancing (the latter a foregone conclusion in his films), there is the threat he’s going to behave dangerously. Rockwell’s physical transformation is particularly intriguing, as his muscles become puffy and his hair thins, the last remnants of the old Kenneth in his sunken eyes, the only way he can communicate to Betty weekly that he’s not fit for prison. As Betty, the humorless Hilary Swank is a non-entity when sharing a scene with Rockwell, and without him, the sturm und drang of the story give her only two emotions to play, driven and angry. It’s safe to say that anything in “Conviction” without Rockwell is a slog.
Tony Goldwyn comes across as a filmmaker who unequivocally loves this story. Scenes of Betty Anne and Kenneth are children are bathed in a golden light, while as adults, the two never have anything more than a mild disagreement, so strong is their bond. Furthermore, there are good guys and bad guys in this story. Betty Anne’s DNA research is aided by dashing good guy lawyer Peter Gallagher and his heroic hair, while Betty Anne’s kids have only momentary dispute with what she’s doing, usually helping by making breakfast and coffee and providing moral support when they probably should be going to school or making friends. Opposing them are characters like Melissa Leo’s cartoonishly remorseless cop who takes Kenneth in, all bluster and schoolmarm-ish self-righteousness, while Kenneth’s ex-girlfriends who testify against him end up as catatonic single mothers (Clea Duvall, playing much older) or raving junkies (Juliette Lewis, playing Gollum).
As a result, Goldwyn hasn’t become close to this story as much as he’s gravitated directly towards the justice dealt out. No matter what kind of people Betty Anne Waters and Kenneth were, Goldwyn did them a favor, as the film remains a singleminded, achingly literal tale of one brother and one sister fighting injustice. It’s someone trying to make a movie about humans (complete with a terrible, overbearing score from Paul Cantelon) and instead falling in love with the story of the system, the objectives crossed off a checklist while character and nuance fall by the wayside. It’s TV, in other words. And not even HBO. [C-]
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