The Life of David Gale [DVD] [2003] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Kevin Spacey (iAmerican Beauty/i) 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, iYou Can Count On Me/i), so Gale argues that he's been set up to discredit the cause. Committed journalist Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet, iTitanic/i) 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 iThe Usual Suspects/i and Seven. --iBret Fetzer/i

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Customer reviews

review by: CJL date: 2009-05-12 rating:
You Need to Watch This
I think this is one of the most thought provoking movies that i have watched in awhile. br /Winslet and Spacey are amazing in this movie and has only made me like them even more as actors. br /Plot: Winslet plays a hard hitting reporter who is asked to interview a man (Spacey) that has been put on death role and has a week till his sentence is carried out. br /However as the interviews go on, winslet's character begins to question whether he has been set up. Will she be able to help him before its too late. . . br / br /What is so clever about this moive is it sets the audience up so many times. Making you think you know what direction the movie is going in, and then it twists and turns. Its not unitll the very end and i measn the very end does it all begin to click into place. br / br /I beg anyone who loves a good hard hitting, thought provoking and a good thriller should buy this.

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review by: A soul doctor, so to say date: 2009-04-16 rating:
To manipulate eveidence cannot bring truth
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. br / br /Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID br /

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review by: Niky 88 date: 2009-02-04 rating:
A Pile Of Nonsense
I watched this film last week and have never been so bored!The story was so weak and predictible that I felt like turning over!Kate Winslet looked like she was after an oscar even then.For instance the scene where she duct tapes her own mouth and puts a bag over her head looked like it was written to show what a daring actress she is!Nonsense

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review by: Spara Fugle date: 2008-12-14 rating:
are men guilty of being men ?
This film although far from perfect, at least makes you think about the climate against men at present. br /We are not all rapists and murdering maniacs. br /This guy is making the ultimate sacrifice to protest against the treatment of men in our biased society.


review by: date: 2008-11-27 rating:
Thought provoking
This is an amazing film that pushes you to question your belief system. It envokes emotion and provides an insight into the death penalty and those it affects. br /I would recommend that everyone watch this one. It truly is a fantastic film.

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