‘The Life of David Gale’

Even the talents of Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet and Laura Linney can’t save this death-row thriller from coming across as a puff piece.   [R]

By: Bob Brown
   One expects a lot more from a cast that has done better with bad scripts, but somehow The Life of David Gale is all puff. The eponymous David Gale (Kevin Spacey), once a philosophy professor at the University of Austin (read University of Texas at Austin), sits four days from execution on death row. He presses a bright, attractive, no-nonsense reporter from News magazine to tell his story before he dies. What seems like a straightforward assignment for Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) turns into a mad dash to exonerate Gale as the evidence piles up that he was framed.

"Kevin
Kevin Spacey and Laura Linney (above) star in The Life of David Gale, a thriller about a man on death row whose life depends on two journalists, played by Kate Winslet and Gabriel Mann (below).
"Kate


   But who and how and why? Gale pushes Bitsey’s buttons, knowing she’ll dig hard and fast for the truth in the three days she has left to unravel the mysteries. As she jots his story down during her limited cellblock visits, Gale’s life unfolds in flashbacks. He was set up by a comely student (Rhona Mitra) when he at first refused her offer to "do anything for a good grade," then succumbed. Slammed with a rape charge, the disgraced Gale loses his faculty position, his marriage and his public standing as a spokesperson for Death Watch, a national anti-capital-punishment group.
   For solace, Gale turns to drink and then to his former colleague, Professor Constance Hallaway (Laura Linney). Hallaway is a fellow activist who gives him a sense of purpose by offering him behind-the-scenes responsibility at the local Death Watch offices. But even that dries up when the group’s national headquarters forbids Hallaway from giving Gale access.
   The crowning blow has been Gale’s conviction for a heartless murder that seems to have resulted from a combination of drink, jealousy and his sometimes-uncontrollable anger. We see that Gale has had trouble keeping a lid on his emotions in tight situations.
   For all that, Gale has painted himself as a principled, upright, uncompromising professor whose passion for his beliefs has sometimes backfired. We see him lecturing a rapt auditorium on Lacan and service to others. That seems noble enough. Gale comes off as a hapless fellow, a victim of his human frailty and guilelessness. Despite his intellectual gifts, he fails in public situations because he hasn’t the sense or savvy to keep his mouth or his pants zipped when it matters most.
   Tension mounts to a fever pitch as Bitsey and her chain-smoking intern sidekick Zack (Gabriel Mann) come closer to the truth. Mysteries tumble around like so much tumbleweed. Who is the evil-looking cowboy who shadows them in a battered pickup? How did that strange videotape come to hang from a string over Bitsey’s motel bed? And why, for heaven’s sake, has Zack not gotten beyond first base with his voluptuous colleague?
   The trouble with this movie is that it keeps promising substance, but it never delivers. Spacey has remarked that one reason he chose to do this film was that director Alan Parker (of Mississippi Burning and Angela’s Ashes, among others) was not advocating one position or another on the question of capital punishment. It’s an issue on which both sides are passionately, perhaps irreconcilably, dug in. Nevertheless, the people arguing against capital punishment in this movie are smart and good-looking; those supporting it on the faux-newsreels are ugly and semiliterate, so there appears to be a subtext. What the film does seem to condemn is the senselessness of blind zealotry, no matter which side it’s from.
   But the film disappoints by tarting the story up in a very contrived, Hollywood-style thriller. It begins and ends with a chase, as Bitsey runs from a stalled rental car on a lonesome Texas road. The execution is only minutes away before she can tell the authorities what she knows.
   We are supposed to have cared about someone deeply to make Bitsey’s run matter. But I’m afraid even Spacey’s best talents don’t give us much to care about David Gale. His viewpoint seems nothing more than another prop on which to hang the action. He’s a loser who’s on the point of giving up when he finds he can’t even control his drinking after attending AA meetings. It seems odd that a guy with passionate beliefs in helping others hasn’t enough esteem to help himself with the aid of another advocacy group. Nor does the trick ending take the bad taste away. I’m afraid this Gale blows an ill wind.
Rated R. Contains violent images, nudity, profanity and sexuality.