Longford

Think of a Brit-lilted Barbara Walters flowing from Ebenezer Scrooge's rubbery face and you have Jim Broadbent as Mr. Doubtfire, err Lord Longford, a staunch believer in the rehabilitative nature of prison. Enter Samantha Morton, precise as a Lexus alignment, as a child-chopping inmate hoping to land the Lord's assistance in nabbing parole whether she deserves it or not. Convincing performances and a based-in-truth story line of gruesome murders distract from stuffy English hairstyles representative of Death Star officers. With an absence of contrived tension, Longford is as dramatically suspenseful as a Grisham page-turner, where the only conspiracy is whether Broadbent is wearing a prosthetic beak.