Wrongly accused and fighting back in 'Brian Banks'

With its heart in the right place and its style stuck unabashedly in the familiar grooves of the TV movie, “Brian Banks” tackles a subject - a sexual assault allegation and its aftermath - that would be challenging even without the scrutiny of #MeToo.

?That its director is Tom Shadyac - best known for a string of crude, big-ticket comedies starring the likes of Jim Carrey (“Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”) and Robin Williams (“Patch Adams”) - only increases fears of a fumble.

And fumbles there are in this lightly fictionalized film, though maybe not the ones you'd expect from a director who once had Carrey speak out of his rear end. When we meet Banks (Aldis Hodge), a former high school football star, he's trying to resurrect his NFL dreams after serving nearly six years in prison.

Falsely accused of rape in 2002 when he was just 16, and pressured by his scandalously ineffective lawyer to accept a no-contest plea, he sacrificed a guaranteed football scholarship to USC. Now 25, he will soon age out of the game.

When his ankle monitor and status as a registered sex offender prevent him from playing on a college team, Banks enlists the help of Justin Brooks (Greg Kinnear) of the California Innocence Project to have his verdict overturned.

“The system is broken!” laments Brooks, whose main job in Doug Atchison's formulaic screenplay is to repeatedly assert that Banks' quest for justice is futile.

This positions Banks as the underdog hero, tirelessly arguing his case while battling jaded minds and legal deadlines. In one sequence, as Banks races to make a critical meeting with the district attorney, his hardheaded parole officer shows up for a lengthy search of his car.

Whether or not this really happened (Banks was closely involved in the making of the film), the incident feels like manufactured tension in a movie that is sometimes disappointingly bland.

Yet if “Brian Banks” - given the gobsmacking turn the case eventually takes - packs less of a dramatic punch than it should, it's no fault of its lead.

Hodge (now facing off against Kevin Bacon in the gritty Showtime series “City on a Hill”) might make an unconvincing 16-year-old, but this quiet powerhouse is thoroughly credible as a decent man who has navigated a difficult journey from fury to acceptance.

His psychological transformation, communicated in flashbacks of an incarcerated Banks discovering James Allen's 1903 self-help essay, “As a Man Thinketh,” is blunt, but effective.

At the same time, casting Morgan Freeman - currently laboring under his own cloud of sexual-harassment allegations - as Banks' spiritual mentor may not have been Shadyac's shrewdest move.

The other performers hold their own in roles that at times feel underwritten. Sherri Shepherd, as Banks' distraught mother, has little to do but wail, “My son is innocent!” And Melanie Liburd, as a fictional romantic interest who is also a survivor of sexual assault, seems to have been included merely to present a victim's perspective.

Much of this is heavy-handed; yet it's to the filmmakers' credit that Banks' accuser (perfectly played by Xosha Roquemore) is neither vilified nor otherwise degraded. Rather, her motivations are handled with delicacy and an awareness of the confusing nature of teenage emotions - and the not-always-benign influence of calculating parents.

As for Shadyac, it's been almost a dozen years since he released his last narrative feature, before a serious cycling accident set him on a different path. “Brian Banks” isn't a great movie, but it is a worthwhile one.

And if it's indicative of a new direction for its director, you won't hear any complaints from me.