Life of David Gale,The | Review

Parker’ spoils film of mild-highs with an unjustified poetic film ending.

Death Row and social responsibility has never looked sillier, forget about the state of Texas or the president of the United States, we have Hollywood to thank for this one. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the film’s horrible previews–especially with the overtly annoying musical accompaniment that drew me in and nor was it the presence of Kevin Spacey whose latest film projects have included The Shipping News and K-PAX, but what gave me the inkling to check this film out was seeing Premiere magazine’s no-star rating of an Alan Parker film? Surely, the publication was wrong? Nope, a proven track record is hardly noticeable in Parker’s newest oeuvre, a dramatic thriller which strays far away from becoming a film which is meaningful, for a bunch of plot twist devices that makes for a meaningless experience.

Perhaps it was the infuriating players in the film, such as the strongly–minded and prissy high profile journalist (Kate Winslet- Enigma) who is angry that she is never being taken seriously by the fact that the cruel world of journalism prefers her good young woman looks over her journalism ethics, maybe she should be more concerned about changing her unfortunate name. The strongly opinionated woman gets drawn into Mr. Gale’s (Spacey- Hurlyburly) entangled story in an exclusive interview told in three two-hour prison-house rendezvous’. Here, the narrative’s role is to submerge us into the description of the philosophy professor and death penalty protester who when he isn’t ripping out public telephone booths is socializing with his friend Jack Daniels. Why does he hit the bottle?, let’s just say that his ‘extra-curricular’ activities weren’t a beneficial plus to his tenure.

Through back-story, we see this extremely intelligent man in a state of disarray, and we are supposed to be convinced that he was framed for the murder of his closet friend (Laura Linney- The Mothman Prophecies)? What kind of crap is this? Well apparently, the fact that the whole death-penalty of a death-penalty abolitionist in the death-penalty capital wasn’t over-the-top enough, now as an intelligent viewer I’m suppose to accept that the man who fought for these injustices of the Texan death penalty system has no grit to fight for his own life. Kind of like earlier presence of the crappy character a kooky hick with a beat up truck and a junkyard for a home and the ‘faulty’ rental car, this film blows and so do the final twists. Oddly enough, the most frustrating part of the picture isn’t the poorly written characters, the awful performances, the dreadful dialogue, Parker’s annoyingly inserted words, or even the insensible narrative which covers this three act film from beginning to end. If Parker actually cared about the issues then perhaps the of death row debate and the focal issues of the death penalty and dying for a cause wouldn’t have come out like a sloppy subplot to a series of narrative flashbacks that show the life of the man in a ‘case-open case-closed’ scenario, and it might have instead become one-fifth of the filmic genius found in a film like Dead Man Walking.

Making a serious statement about an important subject matter is one thing, writing a ludicrous screenplay that carelessly applies a serious subject matter with a bunch of bogus character portrayals and their dim-witted motivations and a ultimately, the film becomes a ‘case’ of the viewer being shafted from a cohesive ending. The bad screenplay is revolting and the sorest of punch lines type ending does very little justice to the rest of the picture. Avoid this one at all costs.

Rating 1 stars