‘The Good Mother’: Hilary Swank broods her way through a muddled mystery

The girlfriend of a slain drug addict (Olivia Cooke, left) teams up with his mom (Hilary Swank) to make sense of his death in “The Good Mother.” (Vertical)

Not to be confused with the 1998 Diane Keaton film “The Good Mother” or the 2013 TV movie “The Good Mother” starring Helen Slater or for that matter the 2017 Darren Aronofsky film with Jennifer Lawrence titled “Mother” or the 2023 thriller “Mother” headlined by Jennifer Lopez, “The Good Mother” 2023 is a disappointing and murky mess of a film that feels like an uncompleted project and leaves the viewer frustrated, despite the gritty visuals and a game lead performance by two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank.

The clichés come in hot and fast throughout the course of this bleak tale, with director and co-writer Miles Joris-Peyrafitte frequently favoring style over substance. (We get not one but TWO show-offy shots of coffins being lowered into graves, seen from the point of view of … the dirt.) In Swank’s first role since playing an investigative reporter on the solid but recently canceled TV series “Alaska Daily,” she’s once again playing a print journalist, this time for the Albany Times-Union.