Conviction (2010)

Waste of time

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Tony Goldwyn's Conviction is a searing dramatic tale that's heavily based on true events, and is essentially the underdog story boiled down to its most effective elements, with inspiration running throughout its truly remarkable storyline. Hilary Swank can be a force of nature in her work, and she's dynamite here as Betty Anne Waters, a small town girl who is very close with her rambunctious sibling Kenny (Sam Rockwell), who grows up as the troublemaker of the two, running afoul of a nasty local police officer (Melissa Leo). When his next door neighbour is found stabbed to death, Leo sees it as her opportunity to get rid him for good, and tampers with evidence, until he is convicted. Guilty until proved innocent is the mantra with this difficult tale, and because it's based on a true story that happened in real life, it unfolds at a snails pace of tragic events in which a satisfying outcome sometimes just seems out of reach. With Kenny in wrongfully convicted and rotting in prison while his wife and daughters edge towards moving on, Betty does the unthinkable: with no previous experience in college, let alone law, she decides to study for the bar exam, in order to eventually represent Kenny in court, and prove his innocence. It seems like something from a movie, and here we see it, but this is something that really, really happened, which to me is extraordinary and essential to make known. She persists through many obstacles both great and small, and with the help of a dapper senior colleague (Peter Gallagher), and a perky fellow law student (Minnie Driver) she passes the exam and sets out to defend her brother. It's a rocky road, beset with the decayed and deliberately lost memories of years before, and the police officer's longstanding belligerence. Unreliable witnesses, uncooperative testimonials and all sorts of stuff get in her way, but Betty ain't a girl to quit or back down, a character trait which Swank seems to have been born to play, and is the lighthouse which guides this fantastic film along its track. Rockwell exudes burrowing frustration as a man in a position of incomprehensible sadness, hopeful yet resigned to his fate which has been orchestrated by evil, targeting him in wanton cruelty. Painful is the word for him here, and when Rockwell sets out for a mood in his work, you damn well feel it. Juliette Lewis briefly rears her head as a dimbulb witness who plays a part in Betty's quest, as does Clea Duvall very briefly as another witness who seems to have no idea what she actually saw. Melissa Leo is an actress who is utterly and totally convincing whether she's on the good or the evil side of the coin, holding the audience in rapturous awe with seemingly little effort. Here she's so nasty it radiates off the screen, providing a core incentive for Betty's struggle, whether or not the events actually played out like that. Director Tony Goldwyn is an actor himself and uses that experience to forge a film with respect and sympathy for its two leads. One of the most underrated films of 2010.

I have always admired people who stand for the belief/faith no matter what, although I would probably not fond of being a person very close to them... Even if they are right and the justice is finally served, the time and circumstances around affect them and their relations. One of the examples of the above we can in Conviction where a single (luckily successful) fight against injustice saw several declines and comedowns at a personal and financial level. The characters are well performed (particularly Hilary Swank as Betty Anne Waters and Sam Rockwell as Kenny Waters, Juliette Lewis as Roseanna Perry), but as 18+ years were fit into 1 hour 40 minutes, both the script and the character development were not totally seamless, enabling some aridity and abeyance. Anyway, it is the strongest performance by Rockwell I have seen, and it could have been awarded for at least a major nomination. So I am generally pleased with this movie and have decided to bestow strong 7 points.

In 1983, Kenny is convicted of the bloody murder of an elderly neighbor largely on the basis of testimony from two former girlfriends, both of whom claimed he confessed his actions to them. Neither Kenny nor Betty Anne can afford a good attorney, so she decides to become a lawyer even though she's a high school dropout. Also serving as one of the film's executive producers, Swank come back securely to the against-all-odds territory of Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) by following Betty Ann's sixteen-year journey from her GED through college, then law school, and finally passing the bar – all while she was raising two boys and working part-time at a local pub. The ending is predictable from a mile away, but the journey is not. The introduction of DNA evidence provides a linchpin that spins the story close to Lifetime-level dramatics, especially when Betty Ann solicits the assistance of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization devoted to overturning wrongful convictions. Gray's screenplay is solid enough, and Goldwyn's direction is assured within the back-and-forth treatment of the timeline.However, it's really the acting that is aces here. Beyond Swank's sterling work, Sam Rockwell brings an unpredictable furor and a surprising vulnerability to the showier role of Kenny. His rapport with Swank never feels forced, and the devotion of their sibling relationship is what really grounds the threat of hysterics in the film. The periphery is populated by a powerful squad of actresses turning in sharply etched work - Minnie Driver as Betty Ann's law-school friend Abra, whose comic spark highlights how pivotal her character is in representing the audience viewpoint; Melissa Leo ("Frozen River") as the malevolent arresting cop, whose secretive hostility provides the impetus for Kenny's conviction; Juliette Lewis as Kenny's dentally-challenged ex-girlfriend with a drunken confession scene that reveals the actress's long-forgotten raw talent below her usual giddiness; Karen Young in a brief scene as the unforgivable Mrs. Waters; and Ari Graynor ("Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist") as Kenny's embittered grown daughter. It's the cast's cumulative work that makes this movie intensely watchable.

Conviction is a film directed by Tony Goldwyn. It stars Hilary Swank as Betty Anne Waters and Sam Rockwell as her brother Kenneth "Kenny" Waters. It is is the inspirational true story of a sister's unwavering devotion to her brother. When Betty Anne Waters' older brother Kenny is arrested for murder and sentenced to life in 1983, Betty Anne, a Massachusetts wife and mother of two, dedicates her life to overturning the murder conviction. Convinced that her brother is innocent, Betty Anne puts herself through high school, college and, finally, law school in an 18 year quest to free Kenny. With the help of best friend Abra Rice, Betty Anne pores through suspicious evidence mounted by small town cop Nancy Taylor, meticulously retracing the steps that led to Kenny's arrest. Belief in her brother - and her quest for the truth - pushes Betty Anne and her team to uncover the facts and utilize DNA evidence with the hope of exonerating Kenny.In her study group, Betty Anne learns about the new field of DNA testing and realizes this could be the key to overturning Kenny's conviction. She contacts attorney Barry Scheck from the Innocence Project. The backlog of cases will mean waiting more than a year unless she can pass the bar and find the blood evidence from Kenny's trial herself to have it tested. At first she is stonewalled, then told the evidence was destroyed, but she refuses to give up, and she and her friend Abra embark on an odyssey to recover any evidence that might still be stored away somewhere. At the time of the trial, Kenny's blood type was shown to be identical to the killer's but DNA testing didn't exist. In the process, Betty Anne learns from an acquaintance who is now a police officer that Nancy Taylor was fired from the police department for fabricating evidence in another case. This deepens Betty Anne's suspicions about Kenny's conviction and the "evidence" given at trial. Finally the DNA results come back and establish that the blood was not Kenny's. Betty Anne and Kenny are overjoyed and think he is about to be released, after 16 years in prison, but Martha Coakley, of the District Attorney's office, refuses to vacate the conviction. They claim there was still enough evidence to convict Kenny as an accomplice, and Kenny is convinced that no matter what they do the authorities will find a way to keep him in prison to avoid admitting to a botched prosecution. Betty Anne is heartbroken but again refuses to give up.Betty Anne, Abra, and Barry Scheck visit the other two trial witnesses, Kenny's ex-wife and ex-girlfriend. Both tearfully admit that Sergeant Nancy Taylor coerced them into perjuring themselves at the trial in order to get a conviction. With an affidavit from Kenny's ex-wife and the DNA evidence, Kenny's conviction is vacated and he is freed from prison after 18 years in June 2001. Betty Anne is able to persuade his daughter, Mandy (Ari Graynor), who he had only known as a small child, that he never stopped trying to reach out to her while he was in prison despite his ex-wife's efforts to estrange them. He is able to reconnect with his daughter and is reunited with his sister, and her sons. The epilogue states that Betty Anne secured a large civil settlement from the City of Ayer for Kenny's wrongful conviction, but former Sergeant Nancy Taylor could not be charged with a crime because the statute of limitations had expired. Katharina Brow's real murderer has not been found.Less compelling -- and more manipulative -- than it should be, Conviction benefits from its compelling true story and a pair of solid performances from Swank and Rockwell.