The Life of David Gale vs. A Time to Kill

Cleckley

on 9/28/2011

Oh yeah baby! Two movies with Kevin Spacey on opposite sides of Capital Punishment and on opposite sides of Capital Punishment (yezzir, you read that right). I guess the same criticisms can be levelled at both... the manipulative politics and the heavy-handedness. Didn't bother me at all to be honest. I remember liking David Gale for making a mockery of the legal system. Yeah, that's right, fuck your innately flawed jurisprudence (unavoidable though it may be). I also remember thinking that the twist was far too telegraphed. Necessary but telegraphed. I think it would have been a superior flick if they had avoided playing that ending out as a twist and perhaps opted for the dramatic irony method. A Time To Kill adds cliches and emotion to the weaknesses cited above. But you know what? It doesn't matter. On these rare occasions, and only on these rare occasions, It bessems the jaded moviegoer to remember that cliches are born from absurdly repeated historical truths; born from recycled, reproduced and replayed social hiccups. Sometimes a cliche is not a contrivance, rather a reflection on society's, the law's and man's more general (and more frequently observed) nature to just fuck things up. The moral here? Vote for the movie that makes Sandra Bullock remarkably tolerable. (Not sure on my use of the word "beseem". I think I got it right.)