Is it possible to make a politically-charged movie that offends both sides of the aisle without educating either of them -- or anyone for that matter? "The Life of David Gale" certainly tries. Between the movie's invariably negative portrayal of conservatives and poorly-executed liberal preaching, it will unite partisans in mutual disdain.
The film opens with a shot of reporter Bitsy Bloom (Kate Winslet) running from her smoking rental car as she rushes toward David Gale's (Kevin Spacey) execution with a video that proves his innocence.
Director Alan Parker's attempt to build suspense seems like a melodramatic last-resort technique, but most audiences won't begin to cringe until at least the next scene, when we flash back to the beginning of Bloom's association with Gale. Four days prior to Bloom's marathon run, she and her intern, Zack (Gabriel Mann), are en route to a prison where David Gale, a condemned rapist and murderer, is three days from his execution and anxious for an interview.
In what must be the most gratingly partisan and unnecessary part of the entire script, Zack expresses his doubts about Gale's guilt: "This guy's a flaming liberal 73 percent of serial killers vote Republican." I saw several viewers leave the theater immediately after this low blow.
The movie has a divisive streak that even its subject matter doesn't seem to warrant. North vs. South, New York vs. Texas, religion vs. secular liberalism, right vs. left, and everything in between is either expressed or implied. This film takes place in Texas, and virtually every Southerner is portrayed as a hick, a bloodthirsty pro-death zealot, or simply fat and stupid. But Bloom and Zack are from New York, so they are predictably handsome, hip and enlightened.
Gale is introduced as a Harvard-educated professor and a former anti-death-penalty activist, so we are led to assume that he is also "superior" to the people who hold him. His "interview" with Bloom is little more than a sob session in which he explains his story. Bloom has been allotted a total of six hours with this man, and he seems to make far more of the time than she does.
Although Bloom is cast in the mould of the "tough reporter who did time to protect her sources," Gale's story -- that's really all he offers -- immediately convinces this cynical professional journalist that he's innocent. You know the writers have dropped the ball on character development when their tough girl does more crying than questioning.
The final third of the movie involves a race against time to find the missing video, but the ordeal is remarkably devoid of emotion. Spacey plays David Gale with a subdued professionalism, but Gale seems so resigned to death that the threat doesn't seem to make as much of an impact as it should. A single, rolling tear is about as much emotion as Gale shows. The first half of the movie devotes so much energy to preaching that the filmmakers have trouble shifting from overbearing self-righteousness to the bipartisan realm of human emotion. The audience may not be ready to follow this transition, which involves a desensitizing amount of crying.
Can the film's message be taken in isolation from the techniques that convey it? In this case, the answer is "probably not." The filmmakers rely on trite dialogue to bombard the viewer with liberal values, often without justification. During a flashback, Constance Halloway (Laura Linney), the victim of the murder for which Gale is blamed, has a fit after a cop-killing teen is executed. Despite her frantic cries that "nobody cares," the filmmakers offer us little reason to care. The fact that the girl killed the cop is never really questioned.
Why are we supposed to care? The answer might as well be "because" -- the filmmakers assume that every one thinks of their political messages as self-evident. Liberals will be embarrassed, and conservatives will likely feel offended.
The movie only pays lip service to anti-death penalty arguments like racial bias, a lack of deterrent value and incompetent counsel, devoting virtually all of its time to proving that an innocent man can be sentenced to death. The manner in which the filmmakers attempt to expose this flaw has less to do with research and more to do with a heavy-handed scheme that will leave all thinking viewers wondering whether or not the system really fails David Gale.
