This is a movie about a wrongly incarcerated man and the process of getting him out. It is not an action-packed edge of your seat thriller like 'Hurricane'. There are no flashbacks to his former glory. Calvin Willis was convicted of a brutal rape of a 10 year old girl. She identified him, which is how he went to prison for the rest of his life without the possibility of parole, and his car was seen in the area the day of the rape. but the girl herself was a special needs child, and the testimony of other witnesses pointed to another man. There was plenty of DNA left behind, but the crime occurred before that was an option for establishing innoncence.
In steps Janet Gregory, who is a paralegal, sent by her firm to let the family know that they cannot do anything more for them. Calvin has a lovely wife, two small children, and a grandmother, all of whom believe in his innocence--that, and the flimsy case catch Janet's eye and she does more petions for appeal on her own, working at night. She is convinced that justice hasn't been served, and even though she is a white woman working on the case of a black child and a black man, she does get a sort of grudging acceptance from the community.
Then comes the Innocence Project--which should garner some donations from people who see this movie. They have an established pathway out of prison for wrongly convicted people--the other seriously problematic aspect of this story is just how long it took to come to an end. The story is gritty, not too gruesome, but not too exciting--more like what the work on these cases is really like, and even when it appears that someone was wrongly convicted based on current views of evidence, there isn't a simple way out. Sad and eye opening.
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