‘Convictions’ Studies Hate, Forgiveness

A young man’s rash, drunken act robbed her of her son. Now, her hatred for that man threatens to take away everything else.

Such is the situation at the beginning of “Convictions,” a provocative if only intermittently dramatic movie about the reverberations of violence and the rocky road to forgiveness. Starring Blair Brown (“The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd”) as embittered Idaho mom Zalinda Dorcheus, it debuts at 9 tonight on the Lifetime cable network.

Based on a true story, “Convictions” begins at a family get-together with Dorcheus’ four remaining adult sons and their families. Hiding out in a bathroom to cope with the severe pain of her gastric ulcer, Dorcheus finally drags herself downstairs for a bittersweet family portrait, with an empty space beside her for her dead son.

Brown is pinched and harsh as Dorcheus goes before a parole board to argue against the killer’s release, avoiding eye contact with the young man’s devastated parents and clinging to her pain and victimhood as though only she is entitled to them. Her sons, as well as fellow victims’ rights advocates, admire her for her anger, but it has cost her her marriage and her health. Something’s got to change.

Here, Phil Penningroth and Ann Beckett’s script, directed by Joyce Chopra, heads in an intriguing direction. Brown finally convinces herself to visit her son’s killer--played by Cameron Bancroft (“Beverly Hills, 90210”)--in prison so she can confront him face to face. In her visits with him and, later, with his parents (who, in a sense, have also lost a son), she learns that the situation can’t easily be divided into victim and non-victim, the righteous and the guilty. Brown gives a truly transformative performance, and she’s surrounded by a capable cast, including Shirley Knight as her prickly mother.

Too much of the plot is limp with predictability, however, and we have to wonder whether Dorcheus--and we ourselves--would be so ready to forgive the killer if he weren’t a handsome guy from a respectable middle-class family. Then again, that’s just what the movie is trying to get us to do: to take a hard look at a situation and acknowledge its shades of gray.

* “Convictions” airs at 9 tonight on Lifetime. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children), with an added language advisory.