a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
•
John Wayne’s thing was The Cowboy.
Tom Cruise’s thing is The Guy who has to Prove Something to the World, and it usually involves Running.
Robert DeNiro’s thing is Tough Guys with Tempers.
Kevin Spacey’s thing is becoming clearer all the time… he’s Sanctimonious Man, the Smug and Self Important Guy who Behaves Reprehensibly and then has the Audacity to Deliver Holier-Than Thou Sermons. I cannot presume to suggest this means Mr. Spacey himself is that way, but I have to wonder why he is so intent on making this his schtick.
Interestingly, there have been a few films smart enough to portray Spacey as the villain. In Seven he was smug and self-important, ready to die for his psychotic cause, but there was no mistake — he was a bad guy. He was condescending and sneering in The Usual Suspects too, and in Swimming with Sharks, Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Big Kahuna, treating everyone around him with contempt. We were impressed with his intelligence, but nobody suggested he was any kind of role model.
There was a transitional film, the only one in which I was convinced that Slimey Spacey truly had a change of heart: L.A. Confidential. That film allowed him a moral epiphany at the end, but it also gave him an act of courage that earned our respect instead of merely assuming that we will respect him for that wise-man tone of voice.
Now something disturbing has happened. Now his characters, just as self-important, just as holier-than-thou, misbehaving just as much, are being treated as God’s gift to this earth. Yet, he still gets to act irresponsibly and selfishly when he’s not spouting wisdom or finding nirvana. He’s done this in American Beauty, Pay It Forward, K-Pax, and now he’s delivered the most intolerable of them all.
This month, Kevin Spacey is David Gale, a philosophy professor and a notorious political activist. He has enough wits to turn away a slutty student who offers sex in exchange for a good grade. And he has convictions: he has dedicated time and energy to aggressive campaigning against the death penalty. He’s a family man, and he cares deeply for his son.
Thus, when he himself ends up on death row, accused of killing a fellow campaigner, the news media is drawn to the scandal like ants to a picnic.
A popular journalist named Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) lands “the big interview”, the only one that Gale will grant before his execution. She arrives skeptical, judgmental, and cautious. He warns her that his story will be hard to hear, but she puts up a big front, defiant. To him, she is a killer, and she is one tough cookie.
Actually, no, she isn’t. Within an hour of Gale’s explanation of just how the world turned against him, she is shaken up, trembling with moral outrage, ready to go hunting for evidence that could save him. The odds are against her – this is Texas, the state with the highest execution rate in the U.S.
I would go into more detail about the plot, but it isn’t worth it. The story is preposterous, prejudiced, and unfair to the audience. When it reaches its pompous and sickening conclusion, it seems to think it has made some profound point about capital punishment. Instead, it has only made folks on both sides of the debate frustrated as their respective positions have been portrayed unfairly.
Director Alan Parker (Mississippi Burning) moves the movie along at a frantic pace, determined to keep viewers off-balance. Is Gale guilty or innocent? Is Bitsey being guided towards the truth, or is she being manipulated and abused for sinister purposes?
Unfortunately, it is the audience being manipulated and abused. In the picture’s heavy anti-execution propaganda, proponents of the death penalty, conservatives, and Christians are portrayed as either evil or idiotic. The deck is so unfairly stacked against them that even anti-death-penalty film critics are condemning the effort. We never get any interesting insights into the reasons for their convictions; we are too busy being alarmed by their sliminess.
On the other hand, anti-death-penalty folks are portrayed as possessed of a dangerous rage, a sinister and calculating nature that will break any rule to prove a point. And they are held up as the good guys.
The movie goes so far as to glorify violent and illegal tactics in the name of activism. And the movie treats the title character as if he was a saint. Did I say he was an ethical teacher? After a few drinks, he’s having sex with that same student in the bathroom. Poor Mr. Gale! He was deceived! He’s a victim! Then we learn he is a recovering alcoholic, but man, he sure falls off the wagon easy. When his wife takes the boy and leaves him for another man, we are expected to feel terribly sorry for this unfortunate guy. Gale is a lot of things, but contrary to the film’s insistence, he is not a victim.
Worst of all, when Bitsey discovers a videotape of the murder victim’s final moments, we are forced to watch the grisly footage of her death… over and over again. Not only is the victim slowly suffoctiong; she is also stark naked before the camera. One character remarks that no one should have to watch such things. Amen.
Gale keeps talking, Italian opera swells behind him as a tragic soundtrack to his final hours, and Bitsey races against time to save this wise and wonderful man. What shocks me most about the film is that by the conclusion, it still thinks we have seen a tragedy, when really we have seen just how far beyond the law and beyond any sense of propriety a prideful man will go to prove a point. In the end, David Gale is as villainous as Keyser Soze, but the movie is too stupid to realize that. All of its contempt is used up on conservatives… characters it never takes even a moment to develop or understand.
I staggered out from the theatre feeling I had paid money to have someone disorient me, sneer self-righteously at me, and assault me with filthy imagery. There hasn’t been a film this politically mean-spirited and politically prejudiced since Rod Lurie’s The Contender. The filmmakers work so hard to bewilder and to preach that they give us no opportunity to think clearly about the serious life-and-death issues that the film claims to address. They only reveal that their own hatred has overrun their ability to make a coherent argument, and they’re certainly not fit to tell a decent story.
If you want a film that will provoke a good discussion about the death penalty, rent Dead Man Walking. It’s much more rewarding than any of the increasing number of Kevin Spacey’s Arrogant Man Sneering films.