Synopsis
The inspiring true story of Eleanor Riese, a mental illness patient herself, who brings a class action suit to give competent mental patients the right to have a say in their medication while they’re in a hospital, and Colette Hughes, the lawyer appointed to her case.
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Cast
- Helena Bonham CarterEleanor Riese
- Hilary SwankColette Hughes
- Jeffrey TamborMort Cohen
- Johan HeldenberghRobert
- Michael CulkinJudge Farelly
- Tim PlesterRobbie
- Jonathan KerriganDr. Bardy
- Vincent RiottaJames Adams
- Anneika RoseMargie
- Richard RiddellArno
Recommendations
- 63
Washington Post
As Eleanor, Bonham Carter delivers a sweetly oddball performance playing a high-maintenance but fiercely determined grouch who is mostly impossible to like. Swank, for her part, is no picnic either: A former psychiatric nurse who discovered law later in life, her Colette is a largely charmless workaholic. - 40
Los Angeles Times
The filmmakers’ choice to focus so heavily — and, unfortunately, dully — on the odd-couple friendship between the tightly-wound, workaholic Hughes (Hilary Swank) and the brashly spirited Riese (Helena Bonham Carter) instead of on the bigger-picture legal wranglings and wider effects of the landmark lawsuit against a San Francisco hospital may point to the chapter’s cinematic limitations. - 40
The Hollywood Reporter
Scene by scene you wish 55 Steps made you angrier than it does. Yet August's docile filmmaking acts as an emotional soporific, removing even the potential camp pleasures of Bonham Carter's histrionics. - 40
Variety
August, whose English-language films have seldom compared well to his distinguished Scandinavian ones, can’t elevate this material much above the flat, pat TV-movie earnestness it seems content to aim for.
