Movie Reviews

The worst thing about The Life of David Gale is the lame speech that Kevin Spacey's David Gale spouts drunkenly to no one in particular (well, it's to the audience, I guess) while hobbling inebriated down a busy downtown street at night. That was the worst piece of film I've ever seen Spacey do (and considering how bad some of his work in Pay it Forward was, that's pretty bad. Unfortunate, because Spacey is generally a really great actor).

The second worst thing about the film is a much broader issue: it seems to be building up towards having a solid stance on the topic of capital punishment, but then ends with a contrived and cheesy twist (which I picked up about two-thirds of the way through) that backs away completely from making any kind of statement, instead opting for a kind of "You decide" conclusion. Normally that's not necessarily a bad thing, but when the whole film involves you in an argument leaning to one side, and then mischievously pulls out the support right from underneath itself, it falls down into a disappointing and frustrating mess.

Nevertheless, I still found The Life of David Gale to be marginally entertaining, with enough suspense (as contrived as it was) to keep me wondering what was going to happen next.