The Life of David Gale (2003)
A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row.
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the audience applauded
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
i must have seen a different film!!
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
this movie is very touching i watched it and at the end i bawled my eyes out and i barely ever cry about anything but seeing David being innocent and him getting killed also his final meal wanting to be what he and his son ate for breakfast made me cry so hard it is a great movie and everyone should watch it young or old it is a very touching story i love the story myself and how he got in the situation he is in at the time is very interesting and when we saw that the Constance committed suicide and they blamed it on David is the part where i started crying like a baby i rated the movie a ten because of how good it was and if you are very emotional i don't suggest watching it but if you want to go ahead
Reporter Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) is asked by reclusive Texas death row prisoner David Gale (Kevin Spacey) to do interviews in his last four days. Gale was a sincere anti-death penalty organization Deathwatch member and college professor who raped and killed fellow member Constance Harraway (Laura Linney). Disgruntled student Berlin (Rhona Mitra) seduced the married David and filed a rape charge. His wife took their son away. Berlin ran off. Despite the charges being dropped, he lost his job and became a drunk. In the present, Bitsey and her chaperon Zack Stemmons are followed by a mysterious cowboy.There is a big twist in this movie. It is ultimately a cheat because it wouldn't work politically. The premise is twisted to the extreme until it stops making sense. The worst part is that it feels like a cheat. The movie could have said something poignant about the death penalty but in the end, it says something about the simplicity of this argument.
After Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men", it was hard to imagine that a movie could come close to touch yet another frontier in American history of eye-for-an-eye social solution. If I would describe the genre of this great picture, I'll add "Mystery" to what is already written on IMDb. If you are planning to fully enjoy the movie, prepare to either read or look up the figures and intellectuals mentioned throughout the movie including (but not limited to): Kübler-Ross stages of grief, Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst and etc. A great movie indeed which I highly recommend. all the best A.M.G.
You look at the cast. An award-winning cast in front of and behind the camera. You look at the genre. Crime drama. Sounds promising? You look at the length. At over 2 hours running time, you possibly have some doubts, since so few films in the history of the medium have managed to sustain interest at that length, but, you tell yourself, with such credentials, how can you go wrong? Well, the answer is, it is easier than it looks, for this is a very flawed film, with major timing, casting, and writing problems, that succeeds (ie, remains reasonably entertaining and suspenseful) in spite of itself. And painfully so. Interestingly, the film itself is a throwback to an era a few decades earlier (the 80s) when "trick endings" or "messing with the audience's head" was more popular. There is a reason that kind of film died. Ironically, for a story which itself is about opposing capital punishment, the production of this specific film is proof that these sorts of twisty-turny stories really should be euthanized before film is ever loaded in the camera. The first 20 minutes of the film (literally) is one movie by itself, full of great acting, dialog, and promise. Then, at the 20 min mark, Kevin Spacey's character comes onboard and immediately there are issues. It is not so much that he does a bad job, as it is the casting. The role is the antithesis of the type of role Spacey usually plays (meek and innocent as opposed to powerful and evil) and this creates a "disconnect" with the viewer that becomes progressively more uncomfortable as the film winds down the overlong road it has chosen. The killer (of the film, not of the script) is the last 20 minutes, where (effectively) a third movie starts, completely different from the first two. By this stage the audience feels on a subliminal level like a chicken being plucked and headed for the pot. Clearly, there is something going on here, the dialog and action reveals, but you won't know what until the very end, until the Big Reveal.In past reviews, this reviewer has been very critical of films that attempt to succeed based almost entirely because of their ability to mess with the audience. This film is no exception to that stance. Overlong, and structurally very damaged, the end result I believe is but a shadow of what the director originally intended. In other words, an experiment gone bad. With hindsight, it is astounding that the film holds interest at all.