Conviction: Can Hilary Swank Actually Act?
Here's a trailer for Conviction, about the real-life Betty Anne Waters, a Boston woman who put herself through law school in order to free her brother from prison after he was wrongly convicted of murder. Will Swank pull it off?
See, I'm of the mind that Swank's two Oscar wins — for Boys Don't Cry in 2000 and Million Dollar Baby in 2005, beating Annette Bening both times (she now has a hit out on her) — were complete and utter flukes. Swank's flat, handsome aw-shucksiness worked well in both of those films, but she didn't really bring much craft to the table, she was just a one-type performer who happened to fit perfectly into those movies' respective puzzles. When you watch her in other things — flouncing embarrassingly in P.S. I Love You, being earnest to the point of robotic in Freedom Writers, ruining cinema forever in The Reaping — she's kinda just plum awful. I didn't see it, but apparently she didn't do a terribly convincing or interesting job in Amelia either. And now there's this trailer for this mopey Oscar-bait inspire-a-thon. And she kinda doesn't seem to suck in it? Obviously they would have pulled together some of her best moments for the trailer, but... I dunno. What do you think? I've been studying this by myself for so long that I need help: Is Hilary Swank actually a good actress? Or is she really just the most incredibly undeserving dual Oscar-winner in history? Is Annette Bening's immortal rage justified or not?