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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 30322
Released: July 22, 2003 |
| Our Price: $4.94 |
| Used Price: $1.00 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Suspenseful journey into deadly conspiracy & murderous deception begins when a respected professor who may or may not be guilty is charged with a brutal crime. The final twist will blow you away. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 12/28/2004 Starring: Kevin Spacey Laura Linney Run time: 131 minutes Rating: R Director: Alan Parker
Description of The Life of David Gale (Full Screen Edition):
Kevin Spacey (American Beauty) plays David Gale, a brilliant but hard-drinking anti-death penalty crusader on death row for a rape and murder that he claims he didn't commit. The victim of the crime is Gale's close friend and anti-death penalty colleague (Laura Linney, You Can Count On Me), so Gale argues that he's been set up to discredit the cause. Committed journalist Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet, Titanic) takes it upon herself to figure the whole thing out--and so we follow her through a ridiculous plot full of supposedly shocking twists that are telegraphed far in advance and make very little sense when they arrive. The overwritten script tries to cover too many hot-button issues and gives Spacey way too many showy scenes where he gets to be passionate and caring, which is creepier than his psychopath roles in The Usual Suspects and Seven. --Bret Fetzer
The Life of David Gale (Full Screen Edition) Reviews:
excellent business transaction 
2009-10-27 - The movie arrived in mint condition and on time just like it was advertised. No problems!
Badly Flawed Polemic Against the Death Penalty 
2009-08-18 - I didn't see this movie when it came out, largely because I knew it was a strident anti-death penalty movie (with this being said: I did see and appreciate "Dead Man Walking" because that was well-made propaganda and made an effort to see both sides of the story).
The only reason I watched it six years after the fact is because I've grown into a huge fan of Kate Winslet. Sadly, while she's a great actress and does her best, "the Life of David Gale" sinks because of various flaws and premises.
The movie wears its politics on its sleeve to put it mildly. Cracks like, "You can tell you're in the bible belt by the fact that there are more prisons than Starbucks" and referring to the Governor of Texas (a stand-in for George W. Bush) as a "frat boy" abound.
Kate Winslet continues to show that she can do a convincing American accent. This being said, she came across as a bit too young and "soft" to be a tough, aggressive prize winning journalist. Also, whoever gave her character the first name of "Bitsey" was an idiot. I can't imagine a journalist going by that name being taken seriously by anyone.
Kevin Spacey has a commanding presence, and I found him very believable as a philosophy professor and fanatical ideologue who had his life fall apart because one mistake.
Laura Linney did a good job playing Kevin Spacey's fellow activist.
The ex-student who seduced David Gale and accused him of raping her was very sexy, but I thought she was a little too mature to be even a graduate student.
The actor playing the Governor had an unenviable job of playing a caricature. I can only contrast it with the way that "Dead Man Walking" depicted people who supported the death penalty. Those characters came across as "real people"...not the product of fevered imagination of people on one side of the political debate.
I thought that it was a little too implausible that David Gale would be one moment falling down drunk at the party where he was falsely accused of rape, and the next moment making vigorous love to the hot ex-student.
Another laughable flaw in the story line was how they telegraphed that Bitsey Bloom's car was going to break down at a critical moment. The idea that she wouldn't have gotten one that was working properly was ludicrous.
Watching this movie one would be left thinking that the only reason why we have the death penalty in the US is because evil politicians have forced it on us. That's not right. Instead, we have it because by a large majority, Americans support the death penalty and its constitutionality has been affirmed over and over again by the courts.
The premise of the movie is that David Gale and his colleague (Laura Linney's character) could not come up with a good response to the challenge, "Name one innocent man put to death in Texas." So they decided to create such a case. Laura Linney's character was dying of cancer, so she did not value her life. David Gale was a driven, embittered fanatic who didn't value his so much either.
So they made it look like David Gale brutally raped and murdered her and they allowed what one Supreme Court justice has called the "machinery of death" take over. David Gale was duly convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to die.
Enter Bitsey Bloom. Gale and his friends chose her to break the story after Gale's execution. This story was that Gale did not rape and murder his friend and that the State of Texas did wrongly execute an innocent man.
Supposedly, this news story --which would be a blockbuster-- caused a 17 point drop in support for the death penalty.
But in my humble opinion, the reaction of many Americans would be "What fanatics Gale and his friend were!" It would not be "Wow, I never realized how wrong the death penalty was before."
Think about it. Gale and his friend basically entered into an elaborate conspiracy to obstruct justice with the intent of framing someone...only their target was David Gale. They are the ones who were responsible for Gale getting convicted, sentenced to death, and executed. The system didn't "fail" because of the system's faults. The system failed because of what they did. It wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for them. Gale may not have been guilty of rape and murder, but he was guilty of committing suicide using death row as the weapon.
Bottom Line: "The Life of David Gale" has an interesting premise but in the end, it all amounts to the sort of cheap theatrics that the anti-death penalty crowd so frequently engage in...arguing that someone is completely innocent and blameless when the evidence ultimately proves him otherwise.
Who likes being manipulated 
2009-04-16 - You may think this film is a thriller about the death penalty, but it is not. It looks like it, true, but the end reveals it is something completely different. It is about the way the media can be manipulated in any direction, provided you are intelligent. Once a brilliant university professor was confronted in a TV debate to the governor of Texas about the death penalty. The governor asked him to give the name of one executed person that was innocent and could be proved so. The professor could not answer such a question for the simple reason that there is no post mortem investigation in the case of an execution, except... And the professor started, with his main assistant in his fight against the death penalty, to think of how to prove that point. In the mean time he is tricked by some dumb girl student into doing exactly what he should never have done: have sex with her. She sue him for rape, even if later she will drop the charge. The damage is done. He is kicked out of academia. His wife takes his son away and gets a divorce. She sells the house. He cannot even get a job as the manager of a technical store. He is reduced to nothing, to being a rapist forever. But he does not want to move. His main assistant in his fight is going to die of leukemia. When he learns that, the plan to trap the governor germinates in their minds and they put it through. He is going to be accused of the murder of his assistant though it is not a murder. The evidence it is not is a tape, the recording of what really happened. But it will come in three pieces. The man will be sentenced to death. Three days before his execution he asks a famous journalist from New York to come and take the first and last interview he is going to give her in six hours spread out over the three days before his execution. The first excerpt of the tape we have mentioned will turn up in the journalist's motel room on the second day, before execution, too short and a copy. Worthless. Then after some adventure the journalist manages to recuperate what she thinks is the whole tape that proves what she was thinking, after some personal experimentation, is right: the woman killed herself, but who worked the camera? A man that is seen at the end of the tape, a man the journalist has seen here and there and in whose shack she has found the tape. But that too is too short though not worthless. It creates havoc and it proves an innocent man can be sentenced to death. During that time the $500,000 for the interview travel to Mexico and the ex-wife for the son. The father had been vindicated in the mean time. But the journalist finally receives the last excerpt of the tape, the end of the suicidal demonstrative séance and there the professor is shown coming at this very moment, just after the death of the woman, just as if he had been behind the camera all the time and he turns that camera off, after checking the woman is dead. The media had been manipulated about the guilt of the man and about the fairness and justice of the death penalty, then about the man's innocence and the suicide of the woman, and yet the truth was that the death had been planned in such a way that the execution would demonstrate how an innocent person can be sentenced to death. Manipulation all along by a woman who wanted to make her natural death useful for the cause she advocated and by a man who did not have the courage to move on and start a new life after having been destroyed by an unscrupulous student and by his own dumbness: students are out of reach as long as they are within grading distance. He preferred to make his death (which becomes a very special suicide) useful for the cause he advocated and for his own son. But the film is short because two men helped the woman and staged her death and the man lied all along the way of his confession and ordeal. The media are so naïve that they believe anything provided it smells slightly sulfurous or sulfuric.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
Great, great movie with stellar performances by Winslet, Linney and Spacey
2009-01-31 - I don't see how some reviewers missed the subplots or thought there were too many. I guess they must suffer from ADD. I got the whole story the first time around, and have watched it many more times for the great dramatic and emotional impact it takes the viewer through. I also think a lot of reviewers forget to watch the acting, besides just the story line. In this I feel that Kate Winslet delivered an absolutely magnificent, emotional and gut-wrenching performance; as did Laura Linney and of course, Kevin Spacey.
Too many people have preconceived notions about a movie before it even begins to tell the story, and end up convincing themselves that a movie is bad in comparison to this or that movie; which is a waste of time and thought (unless it's an intentional wanna-be type movie). Gosh, just look and listen. Try to be impartial, even though there may be a message; albeit forced-fed at times to the viewer (Libs and Cons take note).
The more I see great acting (like that of the principals in this movie), the more I appreciate how much work actors put into their characters and how hard it is to "stay in character" as the filming goes on for weeks or months. It's really easy to act badly, but difficult to act convincingly. Can't say enough about the first-rate jobs by the entire cast of this movie. Bravo!
This was good for the suspense and acting
2008-11-27 - Kevin Spacey does a great job with his character acting.
There was enough suspense in the movie to keep me interested for the whole thing-- and enough to make the movie worth watching twice to see what was missed the first time around.
It is a bit hard to believe that someone would allow himself to be executed just to make a point about the death penalty. It is even harder that to imagine that he would fake a rape just to put himself in jail as a way to make him easier to execute.
The parts of the plot were MOSTLY resolved at the end, but it is still not clear in what way was the "student who would do anything" tied to the whole plot. A bit of clarification would not have taken that much extra time. And it is on this account that the movie loses one star.
