TV-movie-of-the-week material: a black crack baby rescued from beside the dumpster where his mother mislaid him, adopted by a white social worker, and then at age two subjected to a custody fight when his rehabilitated birth mother finds out he is not in the landfill after all. ("We take cases that are socially relevant," elucidates her pro bono lawyer, not in the form of an official office motto, but in simple casual speech.) Halle Berry's makeover, for her court date, from Night of the Living Dead to Sunday Church Social is remarkable indeed, especially for an actress previously inclined toward light comedy. And her cause is helped mightily by the demeanor of Jessica Lange as the supposedly advantaged suburbanite: wan, stringy-haired, abstracted, overamped in every murmur, overdrawn in every furrow, the very picture of instability, as though at any second she were about to sway into an impression of Billie Holiday singing "Willow Weep for Me." But true to its TV affinities, the movie that had so brashly shouldered into a touchy topic apologetically backs out of it at the end in a blather of bet-hedging equivocation. With David Strathairn, Samuel L. Jackson, and Cuba Gooding, Jr.; written by Naomi Foner; directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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