Entertainment

Just acquit watching ‘Conviction’

Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” isn’t a total plane wreck like Hilary Swank’s last fact-inspired drama, “Amelia.” But two-time Best Actress Oscar winner Swank needn’t clear any space on her mantel for acknowledgment of her participation in this soapy redneck opus, which really belongs on Lifetime rather than in theaters.

Strictly airborne as Amelia Earhart, Swank is certainly more comfortable playing Betty Ann Waters, who spent 18 years trying to overturn the guilty verdict that sent her brother Kenny to prison — a remarkable campaign that drove the high school dropout to earn a law degree.

But Goldwyn, an actor-director who toiled mostly on TV after the early promise of “A Walk on the Moon” (1999), renders Pamela Gray’s by-the-numbers script with a heavy hand indeed. If you’re going to offer a story where the outcome seems predestined from the outset, you’d better offer some surprises along the way. They don’t.

Sam Rockwell, who never seems to find movies worthy of his talent, is trapped in bad makeup as the ne’er-do-well Kenny, a stereotypical redneck who spends nearly two decades behind bars after his arrest in 1983 for the murder of a neighbor in Ayer, Mass.

He’s convicted largely on the basis of perjured testimony, from a pair of ex-girlfriends, that has clearly (to the audience) been engineered by the cop (Melissa Leo) on the case.

Kenny’s mother — who had nine children by seven men — is drunkenly oblivious to his plight. But Betty Ann remains stalwart all through the years, at the cost of her marriage and her relationship with her sons — all portrayed in a thoroughly clichéd and superficial manner.

It’s telling that the most memorable character in “Conviction” is played by Minnie Driver, as a well-to-do woman who joins Betty Ann’s crusade when they meet up as law school students. And Juliette Lewis does some notable scenery-chewing as one of the lying ex-girlfriends.

Around the turn of the century, Betty Ann’s determination finally leads her to Barry Scheck (an improbably cast Peter Gallagher), who is leading up a new project to clear wrongly convicted prisoners using DNA evidence.

But does the crucial biological evidence even exist after more than a decade? What do you think? The answer is as predictable as the existence of — and the reunion with — the grown daughter Kenny never knew existed.

To deliver the happy ending it promises, “Conviction” has to omit a crucial piece of information. Kenny Waters died six months after his release, fracturing his skull when he fell off a wall.