Gale Warning

There's a woman at work who has the major hots for Kevin Spacey. 'Sfunny as I never saw him as the heart-throb type, 'cept maybe for sallow youths with an unhealthy interest in Se7en and/or The Usual Suspects. I don't have the heart to tell her that Spacey's sexuality is, um, unconfirmed.

He plays a capital punishment activist who finds himself on death row for rape and murder in Alan Parker's self-styled 'provocative suspense drama' The Life Of David Gale. Opposite him, Kate Winslet gives herself jogger's nipple as a hard-bitten journalist who has to set aside her principles of objectivity in the race against time to prove Gale's innocence.

Charles Randolph's script is not without it's clever, witty and thoughtful moments but the plot takes such increasingly preposterous and convoluted turns that credibility is irreparably lost. This finds the leads floundering in their roles - Spacey playing Gale as a hybrid between Lester Burnham and Keyser Soze but just coming across as alternately smug and self-pitying; Winslet physically miscast and struggling to give credence to her character's all-too-seamless conversion from tough cookie to altruistic crusader.

Director Parker deserves some credit for eliciting some decent performances from the supporting cast (in particular Gabriel Mann and Cleo King as Winslet's colleagues) but the lack of visual flair in the film's storytelling is dispiriting. Earlier in his career, Parker was criticised for making bold flashy films that existed in a moral vacuum, yet in David Gale he has fashioned a worthy film in a flat, by-the-numbers made-for-TV fashion when what was needed was some of the lurid verve of old.

The film contains some reasonable ideas about integrity and the way in which a man's life should be judged, but the combination of Randolph's bonkers plotting and Parker's unimaginative direction reduces Gale to so much Hollywood hot air. So unless Spacey is your cup of ginseng tea, give yourself a reprieve and wait 'til this one hits the small screen. Case dismissed!