定罪2010

CONVICTION is based on a true story, after Kenny Waters (Rockwell) is sentenced to life in prison without parole for the first degree murder, his sister Betty Anne (Swank), firmly believes in his innocence, decides to become a lawyer herself so that she can legally helps Kenny to clear his crime.

Director Tony Goldwyn (yes, the actor who plays the villain in Jerry Zucker’s GHOST, 1990) clearly knows he has a life-affirming story extraordinaire at hand, and according to whom, the most sensible way to tell it is to lay bare Betty Anne’ travails, setbacks and elation along the way as formulaic as possible, and let two-times Oscar winner Swank have another showcase to magnify an ordinary woman’s indomitable fortitude, and honestly, Swank excels in bringing about a compelling and four-square performance although the characterization never trespass out of the safe zone of respectability, the only time Betty Anne’s monomania shows up its underside is when she blows a fuse toward her friend, Abra Rice (Driver), a fellow johnny-come-lately attorney who is designed with a pure angelic heart with a big mouth, which later she patches up with ease.

While Betty Ann’s working-mother-attending-law-school-and-then-fighting-the-injustice trope is, at the very least, inspiringly watchable, Kenny’s 18-year stint behind the bars is only sketched with very broad strokes, and the life before that sees him as a incorrigible hellion (starting as a child, thick as thieves with Betty Anne, raising Cain due to parental negligence), which is much in Rockwell’s wheelhouse, thus substantiates what makes him an easy whipping boy here, but the whole iffy prosecution, solely riding on circumstantial evidences (two untrustworthy witnesses), never gets a fair deal in its exposition, and it is a missed opportunity not to plumb into the prickly ulterior motive behind the corrupted sergeant Nancy Taylor (Leo).

Elsewhere, CONVICTION is everything what a conventional legal drama looks like, light on the legalese (DNA testing is one operative word here) and grinding procedural endeavor (sympathetic persistence is another one here), orthodox in its message (the story itself serves as an anti-death penalty testimony and Kenny's reparation deal doesn’t even get to be mentioned once), televisual in its anonymous imagery and unmemorable in its banal auditory accompaniment, plus above-average acting effort from tested thespians (Lewis is a two-scenes stealer here as a battered peckerwood), while it is despicable to witness such inequity in the police and legal department, what really interests CONVICTION is that an ordinary person like Betty Anne Waters can win this upward crusade of exoneration mostly by her own exertion speaks volumes of its larger milieu, as if proclaiming such feat can only be viable in a freedom-advocating country named USA, only considering how things have changed ever since, today, it is very hard to suppress a proverb like “even a stopped clock is right twice in a day” to its self-conscious patriotic agenda.

referential entries: Clint Eastwood’s MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004, 8.0/10); RICHARD JEWELL (2019, 6.8/10).

在我肤浅的感官里，这部电影带给我的，是直达心底的感动。 我努力的没有流下眼泪，因为我需要跟Betty一样的勇气来坚持自己选择的生活道路。 来源于生活又反哺生活的才是好艺术。就像这部向勇敢坚毅的美国梦致敬的片子。 斯万克并不是漂亮的女人，她只有毫无痕迹的演技，用来征服全世界。所以这部没有华丽剧情，完全严肃的影片是这般的真挚，如此的打动人心，回味无穷。 这才是美国片。有人性的至真，有现实的残忍，有不断的进取，有最后的梦想成真。 美国梦之所以总能成真，因为那些梦想都是美好的子孙。特喜欢影片最后那张故事原型人物的照片。兄妹俩的笑，那么耀眼。 奥斯卡一来，这部片子更没有了人气。可我们指望奥斯卡什么呢？它从来不是属于我们的奥斯卡，它也不在乎今天的美国梦还美不美。它这几年只喜欢英吉利，也许等到经济复苏了才会有空尝尝其他口味。 但是一部电影是好是坏，也不是小金人说了算的。因为，每个人心里都有一个美国梦，每个人心里都有属于自己的好电影。