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Review Uploaded
02/28/03

1 hr. 30 mins.
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, Laura Linney, Gabriel Mann, Matt Craven, Rhona Mitra
Directed by: Alan Parker

Rating: ** stars (out of 4 stars)

Every once in a blue moon Hollywood likes to trot out a labored melodrama that’s meant to cling on to one’s social consciousness in an honest attempt to establish its gritty tendencies. The formula is quite simple: feature a respectable and high-caliber cast and insert whatever the hot-button topic is at the given moment. Hey, that’s fine particularly if the film can carry off its convictions without the heavy-handed staleness. In reference to director Alan Parker’s haplessly trite death row drama The Life of David Gale, the meager results shamelessly bang you over the head with a blunt sentimentality disguised as a compelling political statement. Whatever brazen approach Parker (Angela’s Ashes, Mississippi Burning) and writer Charles Randolph wanted to take regarding their symbolic stance on the confrontational issue of capital punishment, the convoluted motions of this harried suspense thriller isn’t riveting enough to sustain one’s imagination in spite of its noble ambition to bring this heated social conflict to the forefront. The Life of David Gale is a mundane and manipulative crime thriller that doesn’t have anything new to say in this plodding and self-indulgent tug-of-war contrivance.

Unlike the shrewd presentation that was emotionally robust and genuinely balanced in the far superior Dead Man Walking, Parker doesn’t know when to appropriately distribute or neutralize the tension of his toxic storyline in subtle, heartfelt strokes. Instead, he predictably pieces together an all-too-convenient puzzle that spells out the obviousness in his pandering prison yarn. Witness the lazy, built-in premise: a cerebral philosophy professor David Gale (Kevin Spacey) is suddenly accused of rape (thanks to bitter ex-student Berlin played by Rhona Mitra) and murder thus placing the troubled academic on death row. So you want further irony? Well, Gale happens to be an anti-death penalty advocate while residing in early ‘90s Texas-a stomping ground where this no nonsense American state has the highest rate of staged executions in the whole country. Add in the wink-wink references to a certain “Lone Star State frat boy governor” (George Dubya-are you taking notice of this?) and you really have yourself an “art-imitating-life” display, huh?

The one thing that you can always rely on is the ability to second-guess a top-notch thriller willing to engage the audience’s high expectations. But in TLoDG, we’re not afforded the opportunity to go along with the steady flow of this disposable drama because the filmmakers are so busy force-feeding us the preposterous tripe that we are supposed to accept without rhyme or reason. The entire screenplay reinforces a misguided and wearisome passion that doesn’t challenge the film as much as it was slated to do in the first place.

As the downfall of David Gale persists, we’re thrown into sympathetic mode because of the constant reminders of this conflicted man’s existence. As if being framed for rape and murder wasn’t drastic enough, the film insists on stacking the deck with more touted pathos. See David Gale encounter domestic problems. See David Gale drink himself to numbness. See David Gale come to the realization that his dear female friend Constance Hallaway (Laura Linney) is dying of a dreaded disease (incidentally, she happens to be the same individual who Gale presumably killed). See David Gale try to withstand the turmoil from the governor’s corner office looking to make him the poster boy for good old-fashioned Texan justice. The question remains: will David Gale escape further persecution and evade his ominous fate? Better yet, will there be sufficient time to prove his innocence before the hungry-minded sharks serve his sorry carcass to the electric chair?

Enter determined investigator reporter Bitsy Bloom (Kate Winslet), a take-charge kind of woman working for News Magazine. Bitsy seizes the opportunity to interview Professor Gale several times in an attempt to get at the scoop as to what really transpired. Well, apparently Gale was very convincing because Bitsy feels his pain and believes that he’s the truthful one. With his execution right around the corner, the inquisitive journalist gets busy and assumes the role of a junior-sized Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher as she focuses on tracking down the real murderer behind Constance’s demise. With David Gale’s life on the line, Bitsy has to make every moment count by solving this murder mystery. Along for the crusade is her eager beaver assistant from the magazine named Zack (Gabriel Mann).

The Life of David Gale is a cloying and atmospheric thriller that methodically conjures up ridiculous fodder after another. This clichéd and one-sided celluloid soap opera has the tendency to preach and doesn’t even dare to tackle the patchwork of its questionable entertaining vibes. For instance, wouldn’t Parker have benefited from having any opposition to his death penalty denouncement? Nobody is suggesting that the moviemaker not embrace his personal views on the subject matter or that his opinion is not worthy of consideration. But Parker curiously dictates the leanings of his glaring and gaudy showcase without trusting the moviegoers to make up their own minds about the feelings and misgivings concerning the debate at large. The film would have made for an interesting and plausible exposition had the clashing forces of pro and con sentiment been introduced to take away some of the self-righteous grandstanding. Consequently, we’re stuck with a myopic whodunnit flick that awkwardly wraps its arms around an argumentative societal conflict that’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. And when all else fails, the movie heavily relies on the obligatory flashback gimmick that makes up practically the whole experience.

Spacey, who has released himself freely to yet another typically wounded protagonist in soul-searching transition (see The Shipping News, K-Pax and Pay It Forward for confirmation), is passable as the beleaguered intellectual looking to clear his name before his life is taken away by the very same cause that he is vehemently opposed to based on his personal principles. Although he’s one of the more adventurous actors working in cinema today, the two-time Academy Award-winning Spacey is stuck in a role that he could routinely do in his sleep. Yet he never truly knocks his characterization of David Gale out of the park, particularly in a film that screams volumes for an unfairly condemned man awaiting a death sentence that’s nipping at his heels.

As for Winslet, her gutsy portrayal as the brash Bitsy Bloom is kind of hard to swallow. Sure, she’s defiant and persistent but her turn is nothing more involving than what’s been done by other haughty heroines looking to buck the system in the name of fairness. Here, Winslet is a carbon copy Erin Brockovich in a dusty trail demeanor combating the corruptible cowboys who hope to quiet her journalistic instincts. She is stalked and even given a videotape of the senseless killing. And so Bitsy’s chain is being yanked as she, along with her charity case study David Gale, is being relentlessly toyed with at the expense of the unknown perverse perpetrator. This whole proceeding pretty much transforms Parker’s vision into a sorted yet silly-minded generic thriller trying to find its riveting pulse. Both Linney’s participation as Gale’s sickly colleague who eventually meets her Maker and Mann’s trusty Bitsy Bloom aide out to help unravel this magazine-related assignment is palatable as viable throwaway cogs to this otherwise by-the-numbers crime caper.

The Life of David Gale never fulfills our motivation behind why we should care for a whiny legal eagle suspense piece that casts a lot of smoke without once showing us the sensational fire. The film is comfortable in pouring on the tactical strategies by using overactive camera effects and incorporating Laugh-In-style word montages flashed across the screen that is suppose to reflect a subversive twitch in our subconscious (Truth! Power! Lust! Fantasy! Desire! Huh?). The look of the film is as hazy and crisp as the Texas sun and the soundtrack will give a down-home countrified feeling meant to ponder the existing mayhem taking place within the movie’s cobbled together plotline.

Overall, Parker manages to create some fervor of the unexpected kind-spinning a tender tale that is hopelessly hostile as a ludicrous production with its ragtag commentary on the rigors of capital punishment. His willingness to take on the inherent evils and self-doubt of the death penalty agenda in a supportive yet needlessly flawed film is admirable in concept. But in trying to relay a poignant message of cynicism and despair in the form of a synthetic thriller, this one-man jury has made his decision: David Gale is indeed guilty of partaking in a baseless and desperately cockeyed dramatization.