Here's that movie review, by the way
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE / ZERO STARS (R) ZERO stars
ZERO???
One of the things that annoys me is that the story is set in Texas and not just in any old state--a state like Arkansas, for example, where the 1996 documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" convincingly explains why three innocent kids are in prison because they wore black and listened to heavy metal, while the likely killer keeps pushing himself onscreen and wildly signaling his guilt. Nor is it set in our own state of Illinois, where Death Row was run so shabbily that former Gov. George Ryan finally threw up his hands and declared the whole system rotten.No, the movie is set in Texas, which in a good year all by itself carries out half the executions in America. Death Row in Texas is like the Roach Motel: Roach checks in, doesn't check out. When George W. Bush was Texas governor, he claimed to carefully consider each and every execution, although a study of his office calendar shows he budgeted 15 minutes per condemned man (we cannot guess how many of these minutes were devoted to pouring himself a cup of coffee before settling down to the job). Still, when you're killing someone every other week and there's an average of 400 more waiting their turn, you have to move right along.
Spacey and Parker are honorable men. Why did they go to Texas and make this silly movie? The last shot made me want to throw something at the screen--maybe Spacey and Parker.
You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas.
That is the politics of the film, not the way the story was told.
Actually, the excerpt you provided proves my point. The overall theme does not delve into the film's "politics" at all, it's a complaint of the film's setting. He criticizes the execution system in Texas, but then complains that the movie being set there is a morally bankrupt thing to do. I don't see anywhere in those paragraphs where he addresses the movie's politics...in fact, his statement on "The Life of David Gale" is that it HAS no politics, that it was a movie that didn't take the issue seriously and discredited both sides of the argument.
I would direct you to the first sentence of the last paragraph. He lists movies fairly on all sides of the issues, including a movie that makes its case and is PRO capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song").
As far as him being "politically ugly," I'll say again that he gave a fair review and a thumb's up to "Michael Moore Hates America." Although actually "nowadays" he's been in the hospital and physical therapy for more than half a year and I'm eagerly waiting his return.