2003 American crime mystery film directed by Alan Parker, starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, Laura Linnie, Lorna Matera, and Matt Craven. It tells the story of a university professor who was sentenced to death on suspicion of raping and killing his companions, and was martyred to abolish the death penalty.
Bissy, a newspaper reporter, was named by the imminent execution of David Gore to come to the interview, and David was once a university professor and a powerful leader in the anti-death penalty organization, not only lost his job but also proposed by his wife to divorce his son, fell to the bottom of his life, and was accused of raping and killing his friend, and the death penalty was pronounced after the court trial, four days before the day of execution.
In order to grab the headlines, the newspaper paid David half a million US dollars for the interview, Bixi came to the prison, first met David's lawyer, he also decided that David would die and did not make any effort, after a brief introduction, leaving Bixi and David, who told the causes and consequences of his case.
He turned out to be a professor of philosophy, and in class he said that a person should not measure how much his desires have been fulfilled, but on his character, how much sincerity, pity, reason, and even self-sacrifice he has put in, because the meaning of our lives is to respect the lives of others, and so on. One of the students, Pauline, was often late because he didn't want to hang up for the subject and offered to do anything, and David bluntly said that he should study hard.
David and his assistant Constance have been working on the abolition of the death penalty and running for a call, one day the TV station invited David and the governor to debate on the same stage, Constance told him to prepare well, that night David kissed his son goodbye, hurried out to attend the student party, learned that the school had ordered Pauline to withdraw from school, played a lot of fun that day and drank a lot of wine, Pauline followed the drunken David into the bathroom, as a free woman with him in-depth exchanges, until the day before regretting it.
Because of his drunken promiscuity, Constance quarreled with him, and then immediately began to broadcast live on television, David was well-informed, and he had the upper hand in the debate with the governor about the death penalty, but when the other party asked David to list an unjust case that had occurred during his tenure that had been executed, David was dumbfounded, and it seemed that no good debate could be more convincing than a fact. The debate ended, and to David's dismay, the police immediately arrested him for rape.
Although Pauline felt guilty and chose to withdraw the appeal, and sent David a postcard to apologize, David's life had changed dramatically, and his reputation was bad and he could never go back.
At the end of the first interview, Bissy tries to find Pauline to see if what David says is true, but she disappears completely. Then we come to David's crime scene, where the original nanny now relies on tickets to earn a little money, and she explains the situation to Bissy and believes that David is a perverted demon.
The next day, David continued the interview, and David told Bixi that there was a photographic tripod with no fingerprints on it, that the police had no investigation, and that there should be a videotape recording Constance's death to prove his innocence, but the police preferred to believe that they were criminals, and that the tape was like a key in Constance's body, and even if he knew of its existence, he was powerless to return to heaven.
After being sued for rape by Pauline, the wife left David with her son and proposed to divorce him, the house was sold, the school dismissed David, he began to drink heavily, in order to fight for the custody of his son, he tried to find himself, began to quit drinking and find a new job, Constan was happy to see his old friend regain his strength and continued to discuss with him about protesting the death penalty.
Cowboy man is a staunch advocate of abolition of the death penalty, he admires Constance, is also a member of the protest organization, when David overheard the protest organization's bad words about himself, he drove away in a huff, called his ex-wife to plead with his son to meet and could not get it, when the stigma is difficult to leave clean and hostile by everyone, he drank again and anesthetized himself, and woke up to find that Constance, who had fainted, rushed her to the hospital.
David then learns that Constance, who had fought alongside him, had leukemia, and that a terminally ill woman was running for respect for the lives of others. Bissy also changed her attitude toward David, and the lawyer's inaction deprived David of the opportunity to reduce his sentence, believing that the incident was due to her determination to pursue it.
She and her assistant return to the hotel to find that someone had given her a video of Constance dying and struggling. She handed in the tape, the boss did not think it would affect David's death penalty tomorrow, And Bissi was very angry and found that the cowboy man had been following him.
In the final interview, David continued to tell that although Constance's efforts to live and die had little effect and could not change the status quo, Constance was a little desperate, and that night he confided in David about his bland and tasteless lack of adventure and sex, and David followed up with the offer to add color to her life.
David cares about his stigma not to affect his son, he is also committed to respecting the lives of others, when the interview is over, the unwilling Bessie repeatedly watches the video, and finally understands the cause of Constance's death, she is committing suicide! She came to the scene of the crime with help to reconstruct the process, and finally determined that she was wearing handcuffs to deliberately create evidence of injustice at the last moments of her life, record the death to the most trusted person, and wait until David was executed to make it public, so as to prove that the death penalty should be abolished.
An hour before the death penalty, the reporters are ready, the prison prepares the last supper for David, Bissy sneaks into the cowboy man's house to find the full version of the death image, Constance swallows the key to the handcuffs, puts a plastic bag on his head, takes off his clothes and chains himself backhand, and dies in a struggle, after which David appears and turns off the camera. Bixi cried and ran out to the prison with her assistant, the car broke down on the road, Bixi ran forward but was a step too late, and David was eventually executed.
Bissy came to the scene and sat on the ground crying when she heard the news, but in the end she could not stop the death penalty and clear David's innocence. The cowboy man quietly left with half a million in cash and gave the money and Pauline's apology letter to David's ex-wife. The next day, the video was made public, the media rushed to report it, and the governor changed his previous attitude, saying that the case could not prove the injustice of the death penalty.
David left a tripod without fingerprints to give the judicial system a chance to save himself, but this clue was ignored by the police, directly because of his previous conviction, it was the judicial system and public opinion that sent him to the guillotine, and he and Konstein were willing to die, just to add an example to refute the injustice of the death penalty.