For all the rhetoric that this film spews against capital punishment, you'd think the film would be smarter in convincing us that the death penalty doesn't work. SPOLIERS... We discover in the end that EVERYONE Gale, Constance, Duffy and the lawyer are ALL in on it, on this "greater cause" of abolishing the death penalty. Thus, the characters purposely "botch" the appeal process--the very same appeal process that, in its redundancy, is in place to assure that innocent people are not executed. You're allowed to file appeals, good lawyers do this. And if you don't like your lawyer, you can fire him and get another one and keep appealing, so that if you are indeed innocent, the truth will come out. But David Gale and company, because of their supposed greater cause, because he had to be a martyr, PURPOSELY botched this process and he thus, he gets executed. What does that prove? It certainly doesn't prove that the death penalty executes innocent people? He LET HIMSELF get executed. Had he NOT botched it, the truth may have come out--or at the very least, he would've gotten life instead of death. Also, had Gale shown his estranged wife the post-card from the woman who accused him of rape, THE MOMENT he received it, she would've seen that he was innocent. But no, it's more "dramatic" to send it WHEN HE'S DEAD! So he selfishly gave up a life with his own son to do this. That's not love, that's fundamentalism. Ugggh. This is the problem with liberal hollywood... they're so blinded by their own warped ideology that they miss the obvious truth right in front of them.
Review of The Life of David Gale
