The Confession

A plodding made-for-cable "courtroom thriller" in which leads Alec Baldwin, Ben Kingsley, and Amy Irving use every opportunity available for dramatic hand-wringing, The Confession pairs Kingsley, as a successful businessman who murders three emergency room attendants after their negligence results in the death of his son, with Baldwin, as the ethics-challenged defense attorney hired to defend him. The film starts out promisingly enough with an interesting moral dilemma hashed out between two ethically polar adherents, but this promising plotline is soon supplanted with a pedestrian political conspiracy. Hugely overwrought, with equally heavy-handed direction, major plot and character incongruities, and nary a sympathetic character, The Confession seems less like a judicial thriller than a long day wasted on a traffic court bench. Not recommended. (S. C. Sickles)