Review – The Executioner's Song

This is another movie that I could have sworn I already reviewed some time ago. What a drag it is getting old. Sigh. In any event, this is a made-for-TV-but-still-strangely-full-of-nude-scenes docudrama based on Norman Mailer's "true story novel" of the same name. Ne'er-do-well Gary Gilmore (Tommy Lee Jones) bumbles through a series of menial jobs, petty crime and tempestuous episodes with his girlfriend (Rosanna Arquette). But once he adds murder to his robbery routine, it's a fast track from arrest to conviction to Utah's firing squad (indeed, the real Gilmore made himself famous by demanding to be executed rather than cooperating with the lawyers trying to appeal his sentence). The story itself isn't all that interesting – certainly not significantly different from hundreds of other hard luck death row biographies – but I did appreciate the guts it must have taken to seek financing for a movie without a single heroic character. Mildly amusing