BEFORE: Kevin Spacey pulls his own hat trick tonight and carries over from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". And like last night's film, he plays a character accused of murder.
THE PLOT: A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row.
AFTER: I kind of ruined this one for myself, and it has everything to do with the way I burn DVDs for my collection. I simply have to make sure that the film copied well on to the disc, that there were no cable signal interruptions or emergency broadcast warnings that interfered with the dub, and that means sometimes I see something near the end of a film that reveals too much. I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to spoilers.
The film is largely a treatise against capital punishment, giving voice to the movement that states that if even one innocent man is put to death by mistake, the whole system would be proven wrong. I think, however, that there were much easier ways to make that point. For example, if you could find just one instance in the real world where you could prove that happened, and make a documentary about that, it would accomplish the same thing more strongly and more elegantly.
Instead, I'm left feeling manipulated by a fictional narrative, which has to contort itself, pretzel-like, around the facts of a man's life to bring about a similar result. And just like with "Prime", a series of improbable events have to all occur in chain-like fashion, and three improbable events together often adds up to highly improbable, which is dangerously close to impossible.
There's also the way in which information is revealed here - it's not like "Memento", where there's a valid reason for information coming to light in bits and pieces, being connected to an investigation. Here it's quite arbitrary, there are three days worth of interviews with the title character, and when the filmmakers feel that the audience has learned enough backstory, well, that's the end of that day. It's not really a coincidence where the story breaks are, which itself is another form of manipulation. We're only supposed to know certain things at certain times, and the end of each day's session ensures that.
I can't say any more without giving away the whole plot here, which I'm averse to doing.
Also starring Kate Winslet (last seen in "Revolutionary Road"), Laura Linney (last seen in "Primal Fear"), Gabriel Mann (last seen in "The Bourne Supremacy"), Matt Craven, Leon Rippy (also carrying over from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"), Rhona Mitra (last seen in "Stuck on You"), Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "The Kid"), Elizabeth Gast, Cleo King.
RATING: 4 out of 10 picket signs
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