I saw the preview for Brian Banks in theaters, and even though it had a black protagonist and was based on a true story, I doubted whether or not I would see it in theaters. As a lawyer, legal dramas usually annoy me. I also hate sports, especially football. When it finally came to theaters, it was competing with a lot of movies that I preferred, and I did not even see most of them until later or at home. I do not think that it lasted in theaters long. I did watch it with my mom as soon as it was available on DVD for home viewing, and it was severely flawed. It is streaming on Hulu.

Tom Shadyac, the director of Brian Banks, usually makes comedies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty and Patch Adams. Everyone has the right to change focus in their careers, but it does not mean those first steps after transition will be successful. This movie makes Green Book seem as if it deserved the Oscar. It wants to be a biopic and a legal drama, but lacks the narrative structure chops to make either work.

Brian Banks is about the titular football player who was falsely accused then convicted of rape. It is the kind of movie that has to be deftly crafted to not seem as if it is on the side of a rape denier who just says, “These bitches be lyin,” without cultivating doubt about Banks’ innocence and getting the viewer on his side. As a viewer, Shadyac mistakenly took The Woodsman approach, not the Marshall approach. The prior film starred Kevin Bacon as a pedophile trying to hit the straight and narrow. It cultivated sympathy by using his romantic prospects. The one that he rejects becomes a vindictive bitch, and the other that he accepts reveals that she is a survivor of abuse so her story indemnifies him even though they are unrelated. Just because a survivor likes you, it does not mean that you are innocent. Whereas Marshall explored all the narratives like Rashomon and decided to lead with the legal team in a dynamic and fictional way. I am baffled why a film about rape needs romantic drama elements other than wanting any excuse to use Melanie Liburd, who was memorable and luminous in This Is Us.

I understand that Brian Banks’ filmmakers could not quite take Marshall’s approach because Justin Brooks, whom Greg Kinnear plays, and Jan Stiglitz, who is not a character in the film, founded the California Innocence Project. Unlike the lawyers in Marshall and Just Mercy, they are not black so Brian Banks’ filmmakers would be courting displeasure by having white protagonists take the lead in a story about a black man. Here is one way to solve it: make a movie about the project with an aspect of the story devoted to their clients. When the filmmakers focus on the legal team, the story is dull as dirt.

Another way to approach the sensitive subject matter is to rearrange the scenes in Brian Banks. I despise the How We Got Here trope where the film begins at a later point in the film, with Banks after he leaves jail but exiled from his true love, football then has a nesting doll approach to the story with flashbacks embedded in other flashbacks. Considering that football is America’s favorite pastime, maybe it is counterintuitive that beginning with his love and talent as a football player was ineffective, but I thought that it was an obvious error. Do the filmmakers know that football players rape people? Someone slide them a copy of Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. Because Morgan Freeman says, “to get back to who you are,” it signals that the filmmakers and maybe even Banks believes that he is a football player and is trying to get back to that as opposed to the truth: that he is an innocent man.

I actually think that Brian Banks could have still begun with a later scene, but they chose the wrong later scene. It should have begun with a quotidian scene at home on the Internet when he gets the friend request from his accuser. We would not know that it was her, but Aldis Hodge is an emotional thespian and just seeing his horrified reaction would convey to us that it was out of the ordinary. Then the story could show him doggedly trying to get the California Innocence Project to help and explore why the law school students were convinced of his innocence. Since the movie is based on a true story, it could have reorganized the chronology of events between Banks and his legal team without changing them substantively. Instead two attractive women are inexplicably rooting for a hot athletic dude and want to take the case. Hopefully there was a substantive reason that two educated women were convinced of his innocence, but the film never explores it.

Instead the ninety-nine minute drama played it coy and danced around the subject of his conviction. Brian Banks tries to elicit sympathy by showing how his daily life is constantly interrupted while on parole, which is another approach that The Woodsman took, and though a worthy subject for another kind of movie, is the complete wrong approach to take if you are trying to establish your protagonist’s innocence. Burying the lead is something that one does if you are guilty. The filmmakers think that they need to explain why Banks wanted to be exonerated if he is no longer in jail, but I think that his protestations of innocence are sufficient.

Brian Banks also engages in racial and gender respectability politics. The woman who accused him of rape and her mom are depicted as ghetto, which is erroneously equated as greedy, slutty, self-centered and callous whereas he, his mom and his love interest are the good ones. They love God, dress well, are soft-spoken and have nice mothers. I am sorry, but was there not a single woman consulting behind the camera? Why did they show a man borrowing money from his mom to go on a date? These are not ordinarily characteristics that bode well for the character of a man on their own. Also I would love to know why the film depicted the titular character as someone consistently violating the rules then making an excuse when caught doing so such as representing on legal documents that he had attorneys, attacking other inmates in proactive self-defense and violating his parole. It actually undercut the protagonist’s credibility and distracts from the main point: innocence. It is obvious that the filmmakers have not watched Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and need Olivia Benson to consult. Inconsistencies in stories and not having witnesses are typical features in rape cases. Even if there are witnesses, medical evidence and confessions, a rape conviction is not a guarantee.

Brian Banks felt as if it was made by a Christian filmmaking company and instead of surviving the system, it could have easily shifted gears and been about finding Jesus, which is actually what football did. It is an inert mess of a story completely devoid of momentum until fifty-five minutes when an element of suspense and tension are finally introduced. How do you clear someone who is innocent when the laws are stacked against you? Definitely stay for the credits, which are the most emotionally powerful moment in the entire film. Another filmmaker could take a crack at the story.