The Executioner's Song

CinemaSerfMay 2023

3.0

t was always going to be a challenge to dramatise this Norman Mailer book. It is a complex and intricate story of ex-con "Gary Gilmore" (Tommy Lee Jones) who is released back into society after serving a sentence for armed robbery. He quickly meets Nicole (Rosanna Arquette) with whom he has a child, before that all goes wrong and his life spirals out of control again. Determined to buy a white pick up truck from a local dealer, he turns to robbery to fund this - needlessly killing two men as he goes. He is easily identified, arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad (his choice) after insisting that all appeals be abandoned. It is clear, to me anyway, that "Gilmore" is ill - psychopathic, perhaps, and TLJ manages the role with some skill. Arquette also shines , she portrays the teenage mother vacillating from terror of the man to adoration in a convincing, earthy, manner. It's the pace of the thing that got me; it all takes far too long to get anywhere. It simply doesn't need to be 2¼ hours long and the last twenty minutes drag out the inevitable conclusion unnecessarily. Eli Wallach features all to sparingly as does Christine Lahti and though Jones delivers a powerful performance that does much to sustain this depiction of this very flawed human being, I found myself actually just a little bit bored by it all.