Spacey attempts to clean up the world, again

If Kevin Spacey martyrs himself one more time for "The Cause," be it existential enlightenment ("American Beauty"), biblical psychopathic triumph ("Se7en") or just mustering support for the gentle alien in all of us ("K-Pax"), I may stop going to his films all together. \nIn "The Life Of David Gale," Spacey plays an ex-professor who is on death row, accused of raping and murdering Constance (Laura Linney), his former collegiate colleague and fellow advocate against capital punishment. The film works in flashbacks as the battered Spacey relates his life story to Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), a reporter who will help plead his innocence.\nMost who know me would describe me as a committed liberal, and I am certainly no friend of capital punishment. But this film does its best to cast anti-death penalty activists as warm-hearted, articulate do-gooders, and all others as homicidal idiots, bred out of the homicidal, idiot dirt of Texas. What makes it even more painful to watch is that everyone in this film is clearly committed to "The Cause," regardless of its callow viewpoint. For the film's ridiculous resolution to work, Spacey and Linney's characters would had to have been shallow zealots just like their Texas adversaries, and it is to the actors' credit that they were not, even if it hurts the film. Indeed, the only times that the movie becomes enjoyable to watch are when Spacey and Linney stop to sit and talk. Watching these two wonderful actors discuss author Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is almost worth the price of admission. \nAlan Parker's direction is inept, mostly because the flashbacks are punctuated with clumsy shots of hand-scrawled words, a cheap trick that belongs to grade school anti-alcohol films. Appropriately, Parker comes up with a few Rothko-esque landscapes in block colors, but beyond that the film is a black hole for subtlety. Winslet is not asked to do much (and doesn't), and as the audience surrogate she is fitfully bland. The film can be effective, and there are some agonizing scenes of death and pain, but to Spacey's credit there is no scene more excruciating than watching the weak, cracked-faced Gale being seduced by a nubile ex-grad student.