Her Brother's Keeper, No Matter the Cost - New York Times

Ron Batzdorff/Fox Searchlight PicturesHilary Swank as a sister pursuing truth in “Conviction.”

For a while “Conviction,” based on the true story of a New England woman’s long struggle to win freedom for her imprisoned brother, feels as if it just might escape the stifling conventions of the crusader-for-justice melodrama. The film, directed by Tony Goldwyn from a script by Pamela Gray, starts in a chronological scramble: the lives of the characters have been shattered, and the filmmakers are sorting through the shards, offering us painful glimpses of adult anxiety and childhood pain.

There is a dead body in a mobile home, its rooms eerily quiet after a bloody struggle. And then there are Betty Anne and Kenny Waters at various stages of growing up, most heart-rendingly as the young children (played by Bailee Madison and Tobias Campbell) of a damaged, neglectful mother, left largely to their own devices and then separated in foster care. They also have a lot of fun, albeit of an antisocial variety — stealing candy from the supermarket and sneaking into empty houses to eat it, for example — and their youthful outlaw bond goes a long way toward explaining the intensity of Betty Anne’s loyalty later on.

There is another scene, once the siblings have grown up into Sam Rockwell and Hilary Swank, that captures the film’s early, promising mixture of blunt drama and psychological subtlety. Betty Anne, newly engaged, is out drinking with her fiancé (Loren Dean), Kenny and his wife, Brenda (Clea DuVall). Kenny is horsing around on the dance floor with his young daughter, who is just a toddler. He seems to be the clownish life of the party until somebody says the wrong thing. There is a fight — Kenny knocks a man out, bloodying his face — and then the party resumes, with Kenny doing an impromptu striptease and making everybody laugh again.

Mr. Rockwell excels at this kind of volatility — at playing men who are angry, charming and foolish all at once. And Kenny is a fascinating puzzle, someone who does not seem entirely incapable of murder. When he is arrested, thanks to the zeal of a grim-faced police officer (Melissa Leo), he takes it almost as a joke, but before he knows it, the damning testimony of his wife (and a wayward lover played with blowsy relish by Juliette Lewis) leads to his conviction and life sentence.

The movie, at that point, goes into lockdown, as the talents of a number of superb actors are stifled by an airless, by-the-numbers story. The intriguing question of Kenny’s character — not his guilt or innocence, but the quicksilver temperament that makes both seem plausible — fades as the story of Betty Anne’s hard work and sacrifice gains momentum. And Ms. Swank’s performance shrinks in scope as her character’s monomaniacal devotion to freeing Kenny takes over the movie.

Betty Anne pushes through college and law school while working at a bar and rearing two sons (Owen Campbell and Conor Donovan). Her family life suffers, and her marriage falls apart, as often happens to movie heroes who embrace a long-shot, righteous cause.

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