After Fox Searchlight’s Amelia spectacularly flamed out last October, the studio tries again to grab awards-season honors with another biopic starring and executive-produced by Hilary Swank. Gone is the Kansas-patrician enunciation and smartly tailored Depression-era trousers; as Conviction’s Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts high school dropout and single mom who put herself through law school to exonerate her brother, Kenny, wrongfully imprisoned for murder, Swank dutifully returns to the working-class, the caste of her past Oscar glory for Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Million Dollar Baby (2004).
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