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THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE
The Life of David Gale stars Kevin Spacey as the title character,
a graduate professor and activist on death row, and Kate Winslet
as the unfortunately named Bitsy Bloom, a New York news reporter
hand-picked to interview him. Just to spare myself the annoyance
of typing 'Bitsy' over and over, I'll just refer to the characters
by the actors' names.
The Life of David Gale tackles the weighty subject of capital punishment,
wrapping the central subject matter in a flashback-laden murder
mystery that the Scooby Doo gang could have tackled with relative
ease. In the end, nothing and no one is what it seems. We also learn
the valuable lesson that when the engine light comes on in your
rental car, it means the car will stall at the worst moment possible,
and maybe you should have the rental company give you a new car
before it's too late.
Kate Winslet is sent by her news magazine (which is called "News"
as far as I could tell from its covers) to interview Kevin Spacey,
a "genius" graduate psychology professor at a Texas university
(could be Austin or Houston, or even Dallas - the story bounces
back and forth in location constantly and it doesn't really matter
anyway.) Spacey is "brilliant," not just because the other
characters keep saying such about him, but because even when stumbling
drunk down the street, he can quote Socrates and Plato and does
so loudly. Not so brilliant is Spacey's one night stand with hot
young ex-grad student Rhona Mitra, who accuses him of rape. This
accusation causes Spacey to lose his job, his wife, his beloved
son, and control over his life. Spacey is later arrested for the
kinky murder of his activist colleague Laura Linney, and after years
in prison, he is sentenced to die in four days. Spacey, protesting
his innocence, enlists the aid of Winslet to clear his name.
Got all that? Because there's still the matter of the mysterious
cowboy in the pickup truck tailing Winslet and her sidekick Zack
the Intern, the good ol'boy lawyer who represents Spacey, the mysterious
video tape Winslet finds in her motel room, and the relationship
between Spacey and Linney, both personal and involving the anti-capital
punishment activist movement Deathwatch. What does all of this have
to do with poor Kevin Spacey? Is he innocent after all? Can Winslet
clear his name before Spacey is put to death? Also, if you sneak
into the rundown shack of the mysterious cowboy and ransack it looking
for a video tape, upon finding that tape, should you get out immediately
before being discovered, or should you put the tape in the VCR and
watch it then and there? All of these questions and more are answered,
and not all the answers are good ones.
There is no denying Kevin Spacey is a talented actor, but his choices
of late have been questionable. Can't say I cared for K-PAX, and
I actively dislike the manipulative Pay It Forward. Here, Spacey
creates a sympathetic character in David Gale, and enjoys the range
the character offers. He gets to spout a lot of Philosophy 101 and
sound real smart doing so. He gets to be drunk, have two sex scenes,
be a loving father, a noble prisoner, all the flashy stuff actors
like to do. Spacey acquits himself well enough, but the material
itself, the poor screenplay, structure, and the slick, unnecessary
scene transitions bring the whole thing down around him and us.
But at least Spacey gets to have some fun and show some range in
the picture.
Winslet isn't as lucky. After Titanic's success, Kate Winslet largely
disappeared from American films, spending the last few years in
European productions and shedding her clothes in art-house fare
like Holy Smoke and Iris. Winslet dusts off her American accent
and keeps her clothes on for The Life of David Gale, but she unfortunately
leaves behind the charm, wit and fire that she had in her earlier
films like Heavenly Creatures. (I should note, fellas, that there's
full-frontal nudity from Laura Linney, or at least from her body
double, but she's tied up, gagged, and dying in the scene. If you
find that sort of thing arousing, we don't have much to say to each
other.) Winslet has to utter more than her share of unfortunate
monosyllabic dialogue ("Yes." "No." "No."
"Yes."). What's more, her character is largely a device
for the first half of the picture by which Spacey has an excuse
to tell his story in long flashback sequences. When it comes time
for Winslet to act late in the picture, she turns into a cross between
Nancy Drew and Murder She Wrote, able to draw wild conclusions out
of thin air and explain her (accurate, it turns out) theories to
her hapless sidekick, Zack the Intern. She has two big scenes where
she drops to her knees and cries. And she runs a lot, because her
car stalled. Always heed the warning light on the dashboard. Always.
No, friends, I didn't like The Life of David Gale very much. It
takes a serious subject matter, capital punishment, addresses its
pros and cons, but then veers off into a zany plot that has a lotta
'splainin' to do, and then it does the 'splainin'. It's a somewhat
entertaining bad movie with a good performance from Spacey, a few
decent moments, a ridiculous plot, really obnoxious scene transitions,
and a shocking twist ending that will shock you with its twist.
Go ahead and see it if you're really into capital punishment-themed
murder mysteries set in Texas.
- John Orquiola (reviewed 2/3/2003)
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