Alan Parker returns to the territory of the American political thriller for the first time since Mississippi Burning with mixed results.

David Gale (Spacey) is a one-time university lecturer and campaigner against the death penalty who ironically finds himself on Death Row convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a former collegue (Linney).

With a mere four days to go until execution, Gale enlists the help of intrepid reporter Bitsey Bloom (Winslet) to prove his innocence. After all, in the movie’s Texan setting, there are any number of disturbed-looking slack-jawed yokels that are more likely suspects than Gale. Besides, someone has started leaving video tapes of the victim’s last death throes in Bitsey’s hotel room, suggesting that something is a bit suspect about Gale’s conviction.

While David Gale represents a genuine attempt to subvert the innocent-man-on-Death-Row formula, it doesn’t quite gel as a film. Stylistically speaking, it’s a complete mess, replete with godawful 80s synth score and badly misjudged Se7en-style graphics inserted at random. These problems could be overlooked though, if the script and plot weren’t full of more holes than can be found in an average fishing net.

Granted, the film’s earnest and clearly heartfelt anti-capital punishment stance, coupled with top notch performances from Spacey, Winslet and Linney, go some way toward compensating for David Gale’s failings, but one can’t help but feel that this film should have been more than the daft yarn it actually is.