Life of David Gale

Interesting, thought-provoking film up to the last ten minutes or so and then I tend to agree with Roger Ebert that it becomes rather morally bankrupt and reprehensible. Most of the film follows the lives of a couple of anti-death penalty workers who do not seem to have much success. But then they seem to be based in Texas. No wonder they can't get an execution commuted. Somewhere along the way Alan Rudolph figured a good way to talk about this issue would be to have an anti-death penalty character make the ultimate sacrifice and just to top that, show us how it is done, step by step, not one, not two, but three different times via video tape that Kate Winslet, a journalist investigating the case, views in her attempt to understand why Kevin Spacey is on death row. The subject matter isn't new, but the presentation is and controversial enough for Roger Ebert to give the film zero stars. I've never seen that. It's too bad because there are so many fine stars here, the writing is good too and the acting excellent, but alas, it's a film you want to bury in the backyard so deep the dog will never dig it out. I can only imagine that the folks who made this film do not have children (or didn't at the time) and had no idea what message a film like this would really send. For that reason, you can pretty easily skip it.