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Roger Ebert used to be a credible film critic. He even made the claim that he could embrace a film he didn't agree with politically. That statement was proven false when he gave a zero star review for a suspense film set in Texas about a man on death row. Rog liked the cast and crew but disagreed with the message and said that this film could not be made and set in Texas.

In Roger's defense (I'm probably one of his few fans on FR), I read that review and I don't think that he hated the movie because it had a message that he didn't agree with politically--I think he disliked the movie because it trashed both sides of the issue without coming up with a message of its own.

It's also worth considering that he gave a thumbs up to the documentary "Michael Moore Hates America."

I was a fan of Roger Ebert in the days when Gene Siskel was still alive. He's lost his anchor and is quite political and ugly these days. Dopey Roeper is even worse.

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.