Review – The Life of David Gale

There’s a big problem with movies that put all their eggs in the mystery thriller surprise twist basket: they’ve got to walk a razor-fine line between twists so obvious they aren’t surprising and twists so surprising they end up coming across as ridiculous. I’ve griped heavily in the past about the latter, so perhaps when confronted with the former I shouldn’t gripe too much. But I’m afraid I’m going to anyway. The surprise twist at the end of this production is so completely set up early on that the audience spends the whole rest of the show waiting for the set-up to pay off or for the filmmakers to find a way to keep the plot from going in the obvious direction. Briefly summarized, the picture tells the story of an anti-death penalty activist who finds himself on death row after being convicted of murdering one of his colleagues. Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslett do their usual craftspersonlike work in the leads, but they’re just not given all that much to work with. Mildly amusing