In 1996, Sharon Stone put a little grit into her glamorous image by playing a suspicious, snarling death row inmate caught up in the politics of the death penalty. Director Bruce Beresford tackled a similar drama in his uncompromising Breaker Morant, but here he's stuck with a script that favors the tepid story of her ne'er-do-well clemency lawyer (Rob Morrow), whose dormant conscience awakens as he champions her case. It's a well-meaning effort undercut by sentimentality (Beresford gives in to the impulse to find the sweet puppy dog behind Stone's feral street-mutt exterior) and the bad luck to come after the similarly themed but superior Dead Man Walking. Give Stone credit for the passion and conviction to make you care anyway