Hilary Swank plays a woman determined to clear her brother's name, no matter the cost, writes Helen Barlow.
Playing a woman who took 18 years to get her brother's murder conviction overturned - and went to law school to do it - became a personal mission for Hilary Swank too.
When Conviction, which tells of Betty Anne Waters' struggle to get her brother Kenny (played by Sam Rockwell) freed faltered in its development stages the actress made it her only priority.
"I worked on it constantly, over the holidays, even on Christmas night something was falling apart," she recalls. "My family loved this story too and told me to go do it. It's a story that's so in my heart. It was like, there'll be other Christmases."
Swank's previous film had her portraying aviator Amelia Earhart. But the fact that Waters was still alive made her dig deeper than ever before.
"For 18 years, for Betty Anne and Kenny this was their life; this was their rollercoaster ride. We're actors portraying this story, yet what happened is really hard to fathom."
Indeed, one of the reasons the film encountered difficulties before the cameras rolled was the story's complexity. Screenwriter Pamela Gray had an overwhelming wealth of material at her disposal, including court transcripts spanning 20 years
After Kenny was charged and convicted of the 1980 robbery and murder of neighbour Katharina Brow in her mobile home in Massachusetts, he tried to take his own life. Betty Anne made her brother promise that if she studied law in an effort to free him, that he would not harm himself. It was not an easy task. With two young children to care for, she had to study for 13 years, completing bachelors and masters degrees in education before being accepted to study for a law degree. Only then could she interview the witnesses and examine the evidence.
She admits however that Kenny's exoneration would not have been possible without the assistance of Barry Sheck's Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to free the wrongly convicted from prison.
Some of the best moments tap into the sense of moral indignation Betty Anne and Scheck (played by Peter Gallagher) deliver in the film.
"I've met over 200 exonerees now and knowing the work Barry does and the people who are now free, he is an amazing person," she says.
"I contacted him when I came out of law school and with his help everything kind of fell into place. He had people ahead of me in the queue but because I became a lawyer and found the evidence I was able to go to the top of the list and get his help when I did. So I was lucky."
The film takes us back to when Betty Anne, who was a year younger than Kenny, grew up in poverty as part of a nine-strong brood in the small mostly middle class town of Ayer, Massachusetts. Eventually both siblings were abandoned by their parents. They depended on each other to survive the foster care system. A well-known hellraiser, 26-year-old Kenny was already facing charges of assaulting a police officer when he was charged and convicted of murder, based mostly on circumstantial evidence. But he was never capable of murder, says his sister.
When he was released from prison in 2001 he appeared on Oprah with Betty Anne and greatly enjoyed the spotlight. But six months later, at age 47 he died after he fell and fractured his skull as he tried to scale a fence on his way to a family dinner.
"That six months would have been the best of his life I would imagine," says Rockwell. "I of course never met Kenny but heard audio tapes of him and read letters he wrote from prison. He seemed like a charmer. That thing in the bar where he took his clothes off and danced really happened. He was the kind of guy who would do something like that and then turn on a dime."
The process of devoting her life to her brother cost Waters her marriage.
After Kenny's death she never practised law again, though in her current job as a barmaid at the Rhode Island pub - where she earned a part-time wage while studying for Kenny's case - she has helped in the fight for a liquor licence. She also does voluntary work for the Innocence Project.
Swank, who is also close to her brother Daniel, admires Waters' dedication. "The heart of the story is the love between siblings," she says. "When you understand they were each other's everything, and with the lack of parenting, you realise they literally became each other's lives. The way I [saw] it was that if Kenny were to die, that Betty Anne would die.
"I think that in all of our lives we want to find love and that's essentially what I connected to. People are saying that after they see the movie it made them turn to the person next and say,'I love you, I don't want to take you for granted'."
Swank, who has an executive producer credit on the film, bemoans the fact that such stories now struggle to be made. "Audiences complain, asking, 'Where are the movies like Kramer vs. Kramer and the real stories about people?' Of course there are those audiences that love comic books and vampires and there's a place for that, obviously, because those films are making money. But there's also a place for movies like Conviction and the budget wasn't big.
"I've been in the business half my life now and it's just changed so much. But if you believe in something you just keep going. Betty Anne pushed this rock up this hill, and we kept pushing this rock up this hill. It's frustrating but when you have a team of people who believe in something and you're there together, it's very special."
-TimeOut
