I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Smooth treatment of a compelling story that with more realism could have been a lot better. Worth watching for the performances. I felt things were kept from us for too long for sake of making movie more compelling but I'd preferred to have been trusted more with the plain facts. American movies play up the family love and devotion angle and this movie certainly deserves it but unfortunately it can lead to a TV-like approach.

THIS MOVIE IS SO WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS. IVE KNOWN MANDY'S AUNT SINCE BEFORE SHE WAS BORN. ONE DAY I WAS DRIVING WITH MANDYS AUNT HER AND SHE WAS UPSET BECAUSE BRENDA SHOWED UP AT HER HOUSE WITH THE KIDS HYSTERICAL, CLAIMING MANDY'S DAD SHOWED UP AT BRENDA APARTMENT COVERED IN BLOOD BRAGGNG ABOUT THE MURDERS. THE PORTRAYAL OF BENDA IS JUST AWEFUL. INSTEAD OF THE WOKING MOM SHE WAS RAISING HER TWO CHILDREN ALONE, THEY MADE HER LOOK LIKE TRASH, BRENDA DID NOT DESERVE THAT. MANDYS DAD GOT OFF FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE AND A NEGATIVE DNA TEST. THIS DID NOT PROVE HE DIDn'T MURDER THE VICTIM. KNOWING THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY I FEEL PROFOUNDLY SORRY FOR THE VICTIMS FAMILY.

The film is based on an interesting true story , and could have made a good movie. . Unfortunately, it quickly devolves into a lifetime network cliché.Basically, a hard luck white trash family becomes even unluckier when one of the brothers is falsely accused and convicted of murder. Hillary Swank reprieves her role as a poorly educated but not too dumb white trasher, good looking but evidently too poor for orthodontic care.The film has high rent cinematography , but low brow script writing. This is demonstrated early on when , yes, an adult male insults a child, and is promptly beaten to a pulp. This transpires at a wedding reception where a man questions the wisdom of bringing a small child to a rowdy, white trash jamboree. Sam Rockwell, all 170 lbs of him, instantly beats the guy, nearly popping his head like a zit. A toothy swank looks on, smiling like a mutant hyena.It's not that the above scene is a Lifetime Channel cliché, it's that ALL the scenes are. Swank puts her life on hold to defend her brother, getting her GED and a law school degree from some matchbook degree mill. In spite of her disadvantaged background, she is smarter than every man the legal system has ever produced. Major credibility problems, even for the Oxygen Network crowd. They are usually satisfied by simplistic "woman better than men" stories but this one is silly even for them.Hillary Swank has made a career out of these kind of roles, and her "unusual " appearance has simultaneously attracted and puzzled audiences for years. I once heard her humble brag about not having health insurance when she got her first Oscar. I hope she can afford a dental plan now.

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.