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The Life of David Gale
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As Always, a review of The
Film and The DVD (extras)!
The Film:
I had many parting thoughts thanks to The
Life of David Gale, though nothing close to what the filmmakers hoped for. I suppose I was intended to think about capital
punishment, though instead I was too busy thinking of all the laughably bad
conceptual mistakes of this haphazardly constructed film. I'm reminded of a scene
in Planes Trains and Automobiles, when Steve Martin's character
advises John Candy's character to have a point when telling a
story; it makes it far more interesting to the listener. That sums
up the errors of this film perfectly.
Here's the story: David Gale (Kevin Spacey)
is on death row, whose final sentence will be carried out in a matter of
days. He is to be interviewed by Elisabeth "Bitsy" Bloom (Kate
WInslet), who of course is told right off the bat that he's innocent, and
of course right off the bat believes him. She sets out to be the typical clichéd
pipe dream of every reporter; to discover evidence that every
police officer, detective, and defense attorney overlooked; the typical
journalist's fairy tale.
The first half of the film tells
an amusing enough mystery about Gale's life. Both he and the woman he
allegedly killed (Laura Linney) were against the death penalty. Was she
killed, with him framed for the murder? That's the lead Bitsy tries to
follow, which makes the first part of the film less nauseating than it
could've been, in a clichéd, mystery-novel-sold-in-a-supermarket sort of way.
Then the scriptwriter attempts to shock us with a twist that is
totally inept, only to cap it off with another twist, which is imbecilic.
To say that this is a "bad" or "unhappy" ending is
irrelevant: more to the point, this is a dumb ending.
That's about all I can say about this clichéd
story without revealing the "shocking ending" the
commercials keep boasting about (complete with a hand-over-mouth gasp from
Kate Winslet). How shocking is this film's allegedly "shocking"
ending? Well, let's put it this way:
my 65 year old mother figured it out the first time she saw the TV commercial for this film, nearly a month before it was even released.
Either she's psychic, or this is a dreadfully predictable film.
With all due respects to my intuitive mother, I'd vote for the latter
possibility.
Don't worry, anti-spoiler-hunters: I won't
reveal the "surprise ending." However, I will allude to stupid moments not directly related to the
twist, yet demand mentioning. Like how Bitsy rents a car, that just
happens to break down at a tense moment. This is followed by Bitsy losing
her scruples entirely, and deciding that the best course of action is to run
the rest of the way...through a cemetery, no less. . She does this because
it's apparently felt a
sprint through a cemetery would be very symbolic. However, for whom do the
graves symbolize; the "poor" murderers on death row, or
the even poorer victims they slaughtered?
I guess it's not a spoiler in itself to say
that David Gale is so much against the death penalty that he's convinced
he'll be sent to his death, even if truly innocent. However, the
system here is hardly flawed. The justice department works on the
assumption (insert "assume" joke here) that the defendant is not
stupid enough to wait until three days before his execution to have
a reporter prove his innocence. In the end, David Gale may indeed be an
innocent man, though he's is a crackpot, freak,
fruitcake, ninny, scatterbrain, geek, gonzo, goof ball, kook, looney tune, nutcake, oddball, weirdo, whacko, yo-yo, cuckoo, ding-a-ling,
dingbat, flake, harebrain, lamebrain, lunatic, nut, and a total screwball.
Dare I list the synonyms for this film's director, who makes this fruit
loop's eminent demise the sympathetic device for the whole film?
People against capital punishment may think
that people against this film are merely upset at the pro-life stance
taken in the story. This is totally off the map. In fact, I would be more
willing to believe that this is a capital-punishment supporter's way of
making the people against the death penalty look like total scatterbrains.
The truth is, we may never know what the "message" is here, in
this otherwise very preachy film. Given that the whole point was to
"deliver a message," the fact it never does is the surest sign
of a worthless film.
---Techtite
The DVD:
It's not that this disc doesn't have an admirable selection of extras; I
just don't see what the point is. Why show deleted scenes, unless they are
of an alternate ending or the like? Deleted scenes from a film like this
is not unlike a deleted condiment from a table of tripe. Who cares? So,
let's just jump through the extra list: the obligatory trailer, a
making-of featurette, a music featurette (?), audio commentary by Alan
Parker, and poster concepts. Oh, there's also a "Death in Texas"
feature, for anyone who'd like to be any more confused than they already
are, as to the point of this film, one way or another. As for me; I'm off
to review a movie with a much better sense of why it was made
(knock wood)...
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copyright 1999-2001; all rights reserved. Picture of DVD cover is used only for the purpose of review (and to make shopping for
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