Life of David Gale, The

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The picture is neither flawless nor foolproof, but it's smart and tight enough to keep audiences off-balance and entertained for the running length.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

By turns brilliant and simplistic, moving and preposterous, the movie takes one of the ultimate hot-button American issues -- the morality of capital punishment -- and dissolves it into a volatile mix of psychological thriller and socio-political fable.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Plot contrivances, including an ominous cowboy-hatted figure who stalks Bitsey and her tagalong intern (Gabriel Mann), undermine the story's serious political themes.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Damned if Parker hasn't done it again. An intermittently good filmmaker but a consistently bad polemicist, he may well sway opinion here -- but, oops, not in the hoped-for direction.

Slate David Edelstein

As I've implied, this is a great midnight movie: I enjoyed every patchily edited, ham-fisted scene. But I don't like seeing the wonderful Kate Winslet look stupid, or the wonderful Laura Linney abase herself.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie depends on one of those big surprise endings for its effectiveness, but the script gives itself away in the first act.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

In trying to disguise his themes within the structure of a noir thriller, Parker was simply more successful at fooling himself than us.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

By the end, it reveals itself as too pat, too absurd and -- as a polemic against capital punishment -- philosophically self- defeating.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

There's no real artistry to this: It's as though Parker has just seen "Seven" and suffered some sort of David Fincher flashback.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Soon, the audience feels its own sense of despair -- for a movie that might have worked but didn't.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A shock ending may be the best hope for this film, a convoluted mystery that thinks it's way smarter than it is.

Variety David Stratton

Punches the expected buttons without being entirely convincing.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

In the end, the intelligence of the dialogue and crack acting are wrestled to the ground by the zealous politics, the formulaic narrative and a wan and flaccid air unusual from the reliably nifty Parker.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

More concerned with quickening our pulses than broadening our minds.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A self-righteous mishmash that can't decide whether to be a tribute to the fanatical leftist passion that thrives in college towns, an indictment of that very same fanaticism, or a ghoulishly didactic snuff-video thriller.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Randolph and Parker play fair with us, setting up a motive early and clearly. Yet whether you buy the motive or find it far-fetched, it almost immediately tells you who's responsible for the death.

LA Weekly John Powers

The movie's one unalloyed pleasure is a funny Goth Girl, played by Melissa McCarthy, who grasps, as Parker apparently doesn't, that the script is energetic rubbish, not The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Frankly, the film's real surprise is that it doesn't collapse under the weight of its sanctimonious posturing and howling pretension. The film is crammed with high-cultural references and people playing "smart," but none of it adds up.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film's greatest asset is Linney, whose prickly, finely calibrated performance as the doomed Harraway makes her loss resonate more powerfully than any of the point-counterpoint rhetoric.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Becomes more and more preposterous with each scene -- it's almost like performance art.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

The film doesn't have anything but bad news for Spacey fans anxious for the actor to break a stinky streak.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The Grisham-esque murder-mystery plot got so scrambled that, finally, it’s anybody’s guess what the filmmakers intended.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Tries to show it has its heart in the right place, but it's such a crude undertaking that it doesn't actually seem to have a heart at all.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

Some of this stuff should give you some good laughs. Unfortunately, the film's not a comedy, and once the conservative-bashing wears off, the alleged thriller elements kick in. Too bad that for you, the viewer, there's still another hour to go.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Over and over in the course of the film, we can see Spacey, a good actor, reaching down into himself to find a source of verity for this plot-constructed character. It is not a pretty sight.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

So nasty, hysterical and long-winded -- and unintentionally makes capital punishment foes look so twisted -- you wish someone had administered a lethal injection to this dreck in its planning stages.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Positively reeks of self-importance -- the jokey, ham-fisted, pseudo-socially relevant, punch-pulling kind. It reeks worse of acting -- the Jack-Lemmon-in-a-coma Kevin Spacey kind.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Bad movies are easy to make, but as this overheated and self-defeating propaganda piece shows, it takes a genuinely talented group of people to come up with the most astonishing botch jobs.

The New Yorker David Denby

One of those hyper-articulate messes which inspire awe and a kind of nauseated pity. [3 March 2003, p. 94]

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Brazenly ridiculous.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

David Gale deserves the chair for its brutal assault on subtlety.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

Going through the motions of a liberal-Hollywood polemic with the sweaty, mounting hysteria of a bad liar, The Life of David Gale is foremost an overheating gotcha machine, scripted by first-timer Charles Randolph with seams showing and red herrings stinking up the joint.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Another tediously sanctimonious message movie from Alan Parker.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A new low for director Alan Parker, this trite mystery thriller does for capital punishment what his "Mississippi Burning" did for civil rights: with its muddled message, liberal piety, and slick Hollywood plot mechanics.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Unlike "Dead Man Walking" and many honorable dramas before it, "David Gale" has nothing coherent to say about capital punishment, or anything else. It's a dead film lurching.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein.