The Life of David Gale

The Life of David Gale is a 2003 American drama thriller film directed by Alan Parker (in his final film as a director) and written by Charles Randolph. The film is an international co-production, between the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Kevin Spacey played the eponymous character, a college professor and longtime activist against capital punishment who is sentenced to death for killing a fellow capital punishment opponent. Kate Winslet and Laura Linney co-star.

Plot

David Gale is a professor who is a prisoner on death row in Texas. With only a few days until his execution, his lawyer negotiates a half million-dollar fee to tell his story to Bitsey Bloom, a journalist from a major news magazine. She is known for her ability to keep secrets and protect her sources. He tells her the story of how he ended up on death row, revealed to the audience through a series of lengthy flashbacks.

Gale is head of the philosophy department at the University of Texas and an active member of DeathWatch, an advocacy group campaigning against capital punishment. At a graduation party, he encounters Berlin, an attractive graduate student who had been expelled from the school. while Gale is drunk at a party, she seduces him and gets him to have rough sex with her. She then falsely accuses Gale of rape. The next day, he loses a televised debate with the Governor of Texas when he is unable to point to an example of a demonstrably innocent man being executed during that governor's term. After losing the debate, Gale is arrested and charged with rape. While the rape charge against Gale is later dropped, the damage had already been done, and his family, marriage, university career and reputation are all destroyed.

Constance Harraway, a fellow DeathWatch activist, is a close friend of Gale who consoles him after his life falls apart, and the pair have sex. However, the next day, Harraway is discovered raped and murdered, suffocated by a plastic bag taped over her head. An autopsy reveals that she had been forced to swallow the key to the handcuffs used to restrain her, a psychological torture technique used under the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu, which Gale and Harraway had both protested against. The physical evidence at the crime scene points to Gale, who is convicted of her rape and murder and is sentenced to death.

In the present, Bloom investigates the case in between her visits with Gale. She comes to believe that the apparent evidence against Gale does not add up. She is tailed several times in her car by a person who turns out to be Dusty Wright, the alleged one-time lover and colleague of Harraway, who she suspects was the real killer. Wright slips evidence to Bloom that suggests Gale has been "framed", implying that the actual murderer videotaped the crime. Bloom pursues this lead until she finds a tape revealing that Harraway, who was suffering from terminal leukemia, had committed an elaborate suicide made to look like murder. She and Wright are both seen on the videotape, showing that they framed Gale as part of a plan to discredit the death penalty (by showing that an innocent person can be executed).

Bloom does not find this evidence until the day of Gale's scheduled execution. She tries to give the tape to the authorities in time to stop the execution. She arrives at the prison just as the warden announces that it has already been carried out. The tape is then released, causing a media and political uproar over the execution of an innocent man. Later, Wright receives the fee that Bloom's magazine agreed to pay for the interview, and delivers it to Gale's ex-wife in Spain, along with a postcard from Berlin in San Francisco apologizing for the false rape accusation. His ex-wife looks distraught, knowing Gale told the truth and that she effectively stole their child away from him.

Much later still, a videotape labelled "Off the Record" is delivered to Bloom. This tape picks up at the point where Wright confirmed that Harraway was dead, then continues on to show him stepping aside to allow Gale, also present and party to the suicide, to caress her body. It was in doing this that Gale left his fingerprints on Harraway's plastic suffocation bag, showing he knowingly sacrificed himself to prove that innocent prisoners can be executed.

Cast

• Kevin Spacey as David Gale
• Kate Winslet as Bitsey Bloom
• Laura Linney as Constance Harraway
• Gabriel Mann as Zack Stemmons
• Rhona Mitra as Berlin
• Leon Rippy as Braxton Belyeu
• Matt Craven as Dusty Wright
• Jim Beaver as Duke Grover
• Melissa McCarthy as Nico

Production

The Life of David Gale was shot in multiple places, including Huntsville, Texas, Sam Houston State University, The University of Texas at Austin, Garrison Hall, KLRU-TV, Metro Espresso Bar (now Cafe Medici), 2222 Guadalupe St, Cain and Abel's Bar at Austin, Gumbo's Louisiana Style Cafe and Plaça Reial, Barcelona.

Reception

The Life Of David Gale received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and has a rating of 19% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 reviews with an average score of 4.2 out of 10. The consensus states "Instead of offering a convincing argument against the death penalty, this implausible, convoluted thriller pounds the viewer over the head with its message."^[3] The film also has a score of 31 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 36 reviews indicating 'Generally unfavorable reviews.'^[4]

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film a rare zero stars and stated in his review "I am sure the filmmakers believe their film is against the death penalty. I believe it supports it and hopes to discredit the opponents of the penalty as unprincipled fraudsters. Spacey and Parker are honorable men... The last shot made me want to throw something at the screen – maybe Spacey and Parker."^[5] Ebert's co-host Richard Roeper, however, did not hesitate to give the film a "thumbs up".

Soundtrack

The soundtrack (composed by Alex and Jake Parker) has been used in various film trailers, specifically the tracks "The Life of David Gale" and "Almost Martyrs". The score has been used in the trailers for World Trade Center, Munich, In the Valley of Elah, Milk, and most recently, The Artist and The Iron Lady.

See also

• The Man Who Dared (1946)
• Abhilasha
• Virumaandi

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: The Life of David Gale

• Official website
• The Life of David Gale at the Internet Movie Database
• The Life of David Gale at AllMovie
• The Life of David Gale at Box Office Mojo
• The Life of David Gale at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Life of David Gale at Metacritic