Despite its vital message about the systemic bias confronting women who report sexual assault, director Susanna White’s adaptation of Prima Facie (D) is misbegotten in nearly every dramatic respect. Cynthia Erivo plays a formidable London defense barrister forced to confront the very tactics she once employed after a colleague played by Daniel Ings assaults her, but the typically commanding performer rarely materializes into a persuasive central presence. White establishes neither the workplace, courtroom nor domestic worlds with enough specificity or realism to make the protagonist’s ordeal feel fully lived-in. The underwritten supporting characters register primarily as devices to advance the thesis, while the absence of authentic relationships or convincing chemistry leaves even the most consequential encounters dramatically inert. A story built around the collision between intellectual certainty and devastating personal experience should crackle with tension, yet the film repeatedly states its ideas without finding compelling ways to dramatize them. Even its courtroom passages rarely muster more intrigue than a routine weekly television procedural.