Why was "Life of David Gale" panned so thoroughly? (SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
1

I’m not going to use spoiler boxes here, so exit now if you don’t want to see any spoilers.

I just rented “Life of David Gale”. I liked it. I vaguely remembered that it didn’t have a very successful release. Out of curiosity I did a search on the SDMB to see what might have been written when the movie was in theatrical release, and I found the following threads:

Ruin “Life of David Gale” for me.
Ebert gives “Life of David Gale” zero stars.

Here’s my OP. I don’t understand why everyone panned this movie so thoroughly. Many of the posters didn’t even bother to watch the movie. They just heard about the plot and read about Ebert’s zero stars, and then trash-talked it. Yet it obviously was not just a SDMB behavior. The movie didn’t do well at the box office. OK. It’s not Citizen Kane. Or even Sixth Sense. But there is a lot of dreck out there that didn’t do as poorly.

Most of the criticism seems directed at the basic plot. I’d be more understanding if the criticism was about the script or the acting.

I think perhaps that people just didn’t get it. Here’s my take on the story…

a) Gale gets framed by the student Berlin for the false rape.
b) His life from that point is ruined. He loses everything. His marriage, his son, his job, his house, his friends. Except for Constance. She remains his friend. It is all he has left.
c) Then he discovers that Constance has cancer and is dying, so he is about to lose her as well.
d) She is miserable and doesn’t want to die a lingering death, and he is miserable and has nothing to live for. This next part is unfilmed, but I can imagine they discuss a double suicide along the lines of “let’s just end all this pain.” During that discussion someone (I believe Gale) says “wait a minute, I have an idea.”
e) It is then that they concoct the fake murder. Instead of two useless suicides, Gale’s ex-wife and son receive a lot of money and they provide the example of “an innocent man being falsely executed” that the Texas governor gloatingly said didn’t exist.
f) In the end, they both still commit suicide (his just takes longer to take effect), yet achieve some good from it. Their deaths become sacrificial.

I don’t believe it’s any more complicated than that. It all fits. The false rape accusation is not part of any vast conspiracy, it is only the cause for Gale’s life to unravel. The movie is not really about capital punishment. It is about finding a way to salvage some good out of whole lot of bad. The capital punishment angle just provides some additional motive to the double suicide. And of course since it’s a movie it has to be done creatively. (e.g. - with a surprise ending)

Ebert’s complaint about the ending has to do with the final tape, disclosing to Bloom the fact that Gale was in on the fake murder.

I disagree. Bloom has already delivered the biggest story of her life so there is no career-advancing reason for her to disclose the contents of the last tape. Why would she destroy the only good to come out of the entire situation? Gale’s compassionate nature is consistent through to the end. He couldn’t bear to have Bloom live the rest of her life feeling guilty about not making it in time to save him.

Of course, one can certainly nitpick the delivery of the money in cash. That didn’t make sense to me either. But that is a minor quibble compared to the ranting that I’ve read about the plot itself.

At the risk of being judged as an indiscriminate viewer, I’ll ask: Did anyone other than me actually enjoy this movie?

2

I love Kevin Spacey. He’s an excellent actor. But I did not, have not, nor will see David Gale. It sounds very depressing to me. The dude has been falsely convicted of murder, put on death row, loses his family, money, then suicide? What joy! So, do I want to pay good money to see a depressing film? I don’t.

I cannot watch Saving Pvt. Ryan because I cannot bear to watch the graphic battle scenes.

3

This movie was panned because it piously holds one position for most of its length, and then sacrifices that position for a cheap twist ending.

The bottom line is, the conspirators sacrificed their lives to prove that an innocent man might be executed, but when it comes down to it, he wasn’t innocent: he participated in his friend’s suicide, making it a murder. So an innocent man was not put to death, a murderer was.

This puts the reporter in an untenable position: if she goes public with the story, she will vindicate the governor, because after all, the guy was a murderer, so their was no mistake; case closed, capital punishment works. To maintain the conspirators’ lie, the reporter has to join the conspiracy of silence.

Bullshit all the way around; all for that last “Sixth Sense” manufactured gasp.

4

Well I’m glad someone started a thread about this. I LOVED this movie. I have no idea why Ebert hated it so much (I usually think like him when it comes to movies). My husband figured it out within the first half hour, but I was truly surprised by most of it. Kevin Spacey is awesome, and the subject is close to my heart, so it would have been hard for this movie to miss with me.

Corndog, depressing doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching. The ending was actually uplifting in a weird sort of way.

5

Lissener said, “The bottom line is, the conspirators sacrificed their lives to prove that an innocent man might be executed, but when it comes down to it, he wasn’t innocent: he participated in his friend’s suicide, making it a murder. So an innocent man was not put to death, a murderer was.”

Not stopping a suicide isn’t the same as assisting in it. He didn’t do anything but sit by and watch. He didn’t enable her in any way. Not a murder.

6

I think the law would disagree with you; certainly the masses would, and that’s who they were trying to convince in the movie.

7

Gale was guilty, but I don’t know if he was guilty of assisting in the murder. I thought he was guilty of being a passive bystander or something to that effect. I don’t know the law, so I could be way off…

8

No, Kalhoun’s got it right. I haven’t seen the movie, but going solely by what’s been said here, the law doesn’t criminalize simply sitting and watching someone else commit suicide. As long as the watcher takes no active steps to assist the suicide, then he’s not guilty of murder.

  • Rick
9

But did Spacey keep his mouth shut about being there watching the suicide, thereby covering up information in order to prove his anti-death penalty stance correct?

Didn’t watch it, just asking if that might be the thing…

10

Personally, I thought the movie was trite and predictable, and the ending was simply a cheap ploy (and one which I saw coming several miles off).

I love Kevin Spacey, I love Kate Winslet, I love Laura Linney, and I think their performances in David Gale, taken individually, were as good as they could have been … but this was just a waste of a film. It didn’t move me and it didn’t entertain me. It didn’t piss me off and it didn’t make me think. Frankly, when the ending came, I rolled my eyes because it was exactly what I expected it would be… deeply disappointing.

Also, I disagree that the film is not about capital punishment. The whole way the film was made suggested very strongly that it wanted to be another Dead Man Walking, but it lacked the conviction of that superior movie.

I don’t mind depressing movies and I don’t mind “message” movies. However, I dislike movies that seem trite, and seem to pander to the audience to deliver a cheap “twist” ending, and The Life of David Gale seemed to be one of these films.

11

Just in case somebody hasn’t seen it, I’ll answer your question in a spoiler box:

Yes, that’s pretty much exactly how it was.

12

I don’t think it was as simple as wanting to prove his stance correct. He also had nothing left to live for, and to ensure his escape from a meaningless life, he kept his mouth shut. He could have made his point in the 11th hour if he chose to, but he wanted to end it. Thereby killing two birds with one stone.

13

Actually, the point made in the film (over and over again) was an innocent person had to be executed to really drive their point home, because 11th-hour saves were seen as proof that the system worked.

So, Gale wanted to die because he was miserable. He chose this particular way to die because he wanted to make a point. The really stupid thing about it is that he didn’t make the point at all.

Lame, lame ending.

14

I have zero desire to see it. Why? The preview made it fairly obvious how it would end. I had never heard of the movie before I saw the trailer, but I thought it told the entire story, start-to-finish. I thought, thanks for saving my ten bucks. Your OP confirmed my thoughts. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

–
Justin

15

It was preachy,
and I saw the end “twist” coming a mile away (specifically when the governor of texas asked if he could cite one example of a innocent person being put to death) hard to enjoy the twist when you know it’s coming that far ahead.

I honestly thought Bitsie (stupid name) was an idiot for not seeing it, and that she was surprised to see the videotape in the end.

Also, all they did was prove that if you set out to frame yourself for murder and you have the cooperation of the victim, you can do it. It really didn’t prove anything about flaws in the system.

If you’re gonna preach, at least say something worthwhile.
In the end I didn’t find the movie wholly idiotic, it was entertaining, but not enough to recommend to someone.

16

It was preachy,
and I saw the end “twist” coming a mile away (specifically when the governor of texas asked if he could cite one example of a innocent person being put to death) hard to enjoy the twist when you know it’s coming that far ahead.

I honestly thought Bitsie (stupid name) was an idiot for not seeing it, and that she was surprised to see the videotape in the end.

Also, all they did was prove that if you set out to frame yourself for murder and you have the cooperation of the victim, you can do it. It really didn’t prove anything about flaws in the system.

If you’re gonna preach, at least say something worthwhile.

And they should have airbrushed Kate Winslet’s legs!
In the end I didn’t find the movie wholly idiotic, it was entertaining, but not enough to recommend to someone.

17

Could you say more about this? I don’t quite understand what you’re saying. I thought Gale made his point quite plainly. By all appearances an innocent man was put to death. The fact that it was a setup known only to Bloom, the lawyer and the cowboy guy is irrelevant to him making the point.

18

The thing is, this isn’t a failure of the justice system executing an innocent man. The defendant FRAMED HIMSELF. He wasn’t framed by a crooked cop, he wasn’t convicted by a racist jury, he concocted the evidence himself.

If I take a fake gun and point it at a cop and the cop shoots me, was the cop wrong for shooting an unarmed man? No, the cop was correct, because any reasonable person would assume that a realistic fake gun was a real gun, and that the gun would contain bullets, and that their life was in danger. Just becuase the gun was unloaded or didn’t work doesn’t make the cop a murderer.

The point of the movie was to show that the death penalty is flawed, because look! They’re killing an innocent person! Death penalty==bad! Except he wasn’t innocent, so the whole point of the movie is backwards.

19

I also still don’t get it. If Gale wanted to show that an innocent person has been put to death, wouldn’t it entail that he was innocent? Did the reporter break a huge story saying that Gale was innocent, and then find out that he wasn’t? Wouldn’t she have to report that Gale had set the whole thing up? Wouldn’t it damage the credibility of the “no innocent person” argument if the only “innocent” person to be put to death, actually had to work at it, and then lie and deceive his way through death row? Is the movie this mind-numbing in it’s stupidity?

20

That’s not what I’m referring to.

Gale was not guilty of the crime he was convicted of, true. However, the reason that him being put to death did not make his point was that he specifically manipulated the system to put him to death, which was what he wanted.

This was not the case of an innocent man trying to prove his innocence, this was the case of an innocent man making specific efforts to prove his guilt. He did not prove the weaknesses of the system, but only proved that someone with a “cause” will go to great lengths, including manufacturing evidence and outright dishonesty, to manipulate others.

Mind you, I’m against the death penalty myself in most cases. However, the conclusion of The Life of David Gale was so facile and manipulative that I could not find agreement with it. in that regard, I found it very much like Bowling for Columbine: I agreed with some of the overall themes and ideas, but the details of the message were contemptible.