10 Movie Messages Completely Undermined By Their Ending
9. The Death Penalty Is Bad - The Life Of David Gale
The Life of David Gale's very blatant message is that the death penalty is bad because it can result in innocent people being executed for crimes they didn't commit.
David Gale (Kevin Spacey) is an activist against the death penalty who ends up on death row himself after being accused of murdering a fellow activist, Constance Harraway (Laura Linney).
It's eventually revealed that Constance was terminally ill and conspired with another activist to arrange her assisted suicide in order to frame Gale, all in an attempt to have an innocent man executed and discredit capital punishment in the most ultimate way possible.
Journalist Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) attempts to get this information to the authorities, but Gale is executed before she can.
But the big kicker comes at the very end, when a tape reveals that Gale himself also took part in the frame job, willingly laying down his life in order to turn the tide of public opinion on the death penalty.
The problem is that this extra twist completely muddies the central thesis, of how easy it is for someone to get framed for murder and be wrongly executed.
Yes, if you're literally setting yourself up to die, and stacking the deck against "fair" capital punishment as much as possible, then of course you'll end up dead. It's a rigged game that completely undermines the overall message.