Dead Man Walking

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Yes, you're right definitely Sean Penn should've had an oscar to his name. 'Dead Man Walking' proves it. Susan Sarandon is simply brilliant, it just makes you cry at the end. The way she holds out her hand at the time of execution, the way she looks at Matthew (Penn), are all simply brilliant. she certainly deserved an Oscar.

Rating:
Summary: superb without a doubt
Review: if you really and truly understand this film and get in depth and touch with it, its a real drama people...based upon a true story of a nun who visits a deathrow inmate and sees the real him. filled with performances that will make you cry...I certainly cryed at the end when Sean Penn's character died...and I'm saying this becuase I hardly even cry during movies...its just one of those movies that really gets in you after the final frame I guess....one fo 1995's best. Sean Penn should of one an oscar or something...come on people

Rating:
Summary: Dead winner
Review: This movie dead man walking is a very controversial but impressive movie.It has a lot of different views invloved you get to see both sides of the story and feel both sides as well.It proves that we are all human and that we all all bleed the color red.It proves that love overcomes anything and that faith still in fact does exist.It also deals a lot with hope and pain.If you really want to watch a movie that makes you think and feel then I definetly reccomend this one its a dead winner!!!

Rating:
Summary: Is the Dead Penalty a babaric act?
Review: The Dead penalty is a babaric act.
In my humble opinion God is the only one that is allowed to give and to take live.
The state killing a person, independent of how cruel he or she may be or may have been, is not God's Justice. It is the work of man that also can make mistakes.
In my understanding innocent persons have been killed(This is not the case in the movie, but it happens in reality).
People on death row are almost always black persons without money to hire a decent lawyer(With was mencioned in the film).
A dangerous person you have to put in jail forever if this is necessary for the safety of society.
This was also what i saw in the movie.
It really touched me and made me cry.
Of course the suffering of the victims is horrible and this was also shown realy good in the movie.
I am a religous person and it is my conviction that one day all suffering will belong to the past and all souls will be saved.

The movie makes you think and touches your hart.

Rating:
Summary: An Astonishing Film
Review: Dead Man Walking, directed by Tim Robbins, is a movie masterpiece. It boasts a fabulous supporting cast, yet the real stars are Sean Penn, who plays Matthew Poncelot, a man convicted of two brutal murders, waiting for execution, and Susan Sarandon as Sisten Helen Prejean, who, in real life, wrote the book from which this film was adapted. It follows the story of Matthew Poncelot, who, up until the day of his execution, denies commiting the murder he is convicted of. Sister Helen Prejean follows his struggle for freedom from his execution, and helps him with several appeals, failing however. She becomes his spiritual advisor, and his close (and only) friend.

This film is so wonderful not just because of its cast, but of it's non-predujiced way of looking at the Death Penalty. It neither encourages you to support it or not support it; it just shows you the reality of life on the supposed 'Green Mile' in a mature, unbiased way.

I first watched this in my high school English class. We weren't really meant to see it, as we are I am in 11th grade, and this is an R rated film, however I am very pleased we did get the chance to see it.

This film is an excellant eye opener, and I would challenge anyone to sit throught the whole thing without shedding a single tear. It is an emotional masterpiece, stirring every single kind of emoition. Thanksfully, it does have a few light hearted moments of comedy, which stop the two hour film becoming too intense.

I would recommmend this film to anyone and everyone. It is a little brutal for children under 13 years, but I would encourage any parent to sit down and watch it with their teenage children,a nd gather thoughts and views.

Buy this film...it is by far one of the best movies ever made.

Rating:
Summary: Winning movie in which all lose...
Review: It is rare for a movie to portray without attempt to sway, to take on a heavyweight topic without melodrama, to delve into religion without preaching, to handle a matter of political explosiveness without being didactic. Dead Man Walking is that kind of rare.

Susan Sarandon, portraying Sister Helen Prejean, and Sean Penn, portraying the killer rapist whose spiritual guidance she takes into her hands, both give truly remarkable performances in this award-winning movie based on fact. Called to give succor to this unrepentant criminal on death row, Sarandon brings to life a nun's struggle to be a true Christian - that is, to reach out to the lowest of the low, the soul so dark it may be beyond anyone's reach or compassion but God's. Penn is utterly convincing in his role, bringing to the screen the damaged ugliness of a murderer's evil heart, as well as his final moments of anguish that finally allow real feeling to surface. Sarandon won an Oscar for her performance; both deserved the honor.

Capital punishment is (and should be) debated by many. Dead Man Walking masterfully shows all sides of a many-sided issue. There is no right, there is no wrong in this movie. But there is also no looking away. The crime that led to the criminal's execution is horrible beyond description, but it is effectively and powerfully revealed, image by image, torment by torment, throughout the entire movie. No one wins in this movie, all lose. All suffer, and it is impossible to say whose suffering is the greatest. All mothers here suffer a daily excruciation, whether she is the mother of a killer or the mother of a murdered child. Can anyone say whose suffering is greater? Hatred and forgiveness are poignantly shown, and both can be understood, neither of these emotions are out of place.

Director Tom Robbins has allowed his viewer to be one of intelligence. He forces no perspective, he makes no judgement. He allows the viewer to see, to feel for all or for no one, and perhaps to know nothing more than the hopelessness of a situation where so many lives are affected, damaged forever. Who deserves what-is not the most important issue tackled. But if one question alone is raised, it is this: does anyone, one man or an entire government, have the right to kill? On whatever side, or no side, the viewer's opinion falls, the movie is no less powerful from any perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Live Man Cheering
Review: I'm confused...

Was the point of this movie to make me feel sorry for a ruthless, remorseless rapist/murderer/junkie/racist? Oh yeah, he sure remorsed an hour before his execution. Don't they all. If that was the point of the movie, they failed miserably.

However, I give it five stars on the faint hope that the aim of the movie was to reinforce my support for the death penalty. Because if so, the film did a tremendous job. The more I heard from the victims' families, the more I wanted to pull the switch myself. The more I heard the murderer/rapist try to shift responsibility of his crime onto anyone he could, the slower I wanted to clock to tick as to draw out the impending doom. And the more they showed the crime in progress, the more I regret that we don't put criminals in iron maidens anymore.

As for the murderer's "repentance", I didn't buy it one bit. He had his whole life to get religious, he didn't have to wait until he felt the needle sinking in his forearm. And of course, anyone who agrees with the death penalty in the movie (victims' parents, prison guards, elected representatives, even priests) are made out to be terrible, backwards people. Neither the Robbins family cameos nor Eddie Vedder's dying-cat moaning could sway me to believe this rapist creep got anything less than full and complete justice.

So congrats, Susan. You've cemented the convictions of millions of death penalty supporters.

Rating:
Summary: For or Against the Death Penalty, Still a Great Movie
Review: That this movie stars two of my absolute favorite actors (one of whom has yet to receive the Oscar he deserves) and that it touches on a subject that I have strong feeling about (against the death penalty) would have been enough to get me in the theater to see it. But what could easily have been a preachy, two-dimensional movie that simply flogged it's message and put sermons in the mouths of the characters instead turned out to be a well-written, well-acted movie that doesn't stray from it's message but also doesn't make cardboard cut-outs of its characters or let them be overwhelmed by the subject matter and message. This movie had to be as difficult to make as it was to watch.

Some will criticize the movie for not showing more of the victims of the character played by Sean Penn. Of course, those same people will probably also object to the movie's anti-death penalty message. The truth is that a movie about the victims could have been made - and could still be - but it would simply have been a different movie than the director, producers and others set out to make.

What gets glossed over in the criticism is that while this movie never apologizes for it's point of of view, it also never gives short shrift to the other side or attempts to demonize or paint the other side as two dimensional. That Prejean earnestly reaches out to the families of the victims get's glossed over. That the movie gives and honest portrayal of the pain and suffering of the victims' families gets glossed over. That the movie does not downplay Poncelet's crime or guilt, but instead reveals them during the course of the story, gets glossed over.

"Dead Man Walking" takes few, if any, easy ways out. The character's are all fully human in their portrayal, when it would have been easy to paint any of them as monsters or two-dimensional walking viewpoints. It would have been easy to portray Poncelet as a mere monster, instead of a flawed human being who is guilty of despicable acts, but who feels anger, love, fear and even remorse. It would have been easy to portray his family as an evil bunch. It would have been easy to portray the victims' families as bloodthirsty vengance seekers. Instead, "Dead Man Walking" simply tells a troubling story that involves human beings, and that doesn't necessarily have a tidy ending.

This movie isn't likely to change any minds as far as capital punishment it concerned. It won't be all the things it should be to all people. It may simply serve as another means of starting the conversation about the subject, and simply getting people to ask themselves why they believe what they believe in regard to the death penalty.

Regardless, it's just a good movie.

Rating:
Summary: Of monsters, murder and divine mercy.
Review: "Sister, I won't ask for forgiveness; my sins are all I have," sings Bruce Springsteen in this movie's title song while the end credits roll over the screen - giving voice once more to Matthew Poncelet and the men portrayed in Sister Helen Prejean's nonfiction account on which this movie is based; that angry "white trash," those men who are "God's mistake," as one victim's father says, inconsolable over the loss of his daughter; those men locked up in high security prisons for unspeakable crimes which many of them claim they didn't commit. And Matt Poncelet (Sean Penn) is just such a guy; locked in bravado and denial, he proclaims his innocence and would rather take a lie detector test on the day of his execution "so my momma knows I didn't do this" than own up to his responsibility.

With Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon), we first learn about the crime which landed Poncelet on death row - the rape-murder of a couple on lovers' lane - from the account she receives when she starts writing to him and eventually agrees to visit him in prison. It is, as she will soon learn, a story that anti-death penalty advocates are all too familiar with; a story of unequal access to lawyers and of two defendants, each blaming all guilt for their crime exclusively on the other, regardless what truly happened. And as long as she is assured that even if Poncelet would have a new trial he wouldn't go free (as an accomplice, under Louisiana state law he would receive a lifetime prison sentence), Sister Helen is willing to help him find a lawyer and, when the date for his execution is set, try to obtain a reprieve.

But it does not end there, as she soon finds out; and one of this movie's greatest strengths is the way in which it portrays all sides of the moral issues involved in the death penalty. There are the victims' families, a stunning 70% of which break up after the murder of a child, and who are forever stuck with the unloving last words spoken to their loved ones and the memory of all the little homely details reminding them of their loss. There are the prison guards and nurses, trying to see executions as "part of their job" - with varying success. There are the politicians, barking slogans on TV; promising to "get tough on sentencing, get tough on lenient parole boards, get tough on judges who pass light sentences." There are the convicts' families, marginalized as a result of their brothers' and sons' acts, particularly if they refuse to condemn them publicly. ("Now I'm famous," Poncelet's mother comments bitterly on the dubious celebrity status she has attained as a result of a TV show about Matt. "A regular Ma Barker!") And there is the death penalty itself, shown in all its chilling, graphic, clinical detail, here in its allegedly most humane form: lethal injections, which tranquilize the muscles while the poison reaches the convict's lungs and heart - "his face goes to sleep while his inside organs are going through Armageddon," Poncelet's attorney says at his pardon board hearing. "It was important to us to show all sides of the issue," explains director Tim Robbins on the DVD's commentary track, "not to be satisfied with soundbites, and to present the reality ... Ultimately, the question is not who deserves to die, but who has the right to kill."

At the heart of the story are two radically different individuals: Sister Helen, who has grown up in an affluent, loving family; and Matthew Poncelet, the convicted killer. And their portrayal is this movie's other great strength: without either of them, this film would not have been half as compelling. Both Sarandon and Penn deliver Academy Award-worthy performances. (Sarandon did win her long overdue Oscar, Penn lost to Nicolas Cage for "Leaving Las Vegas" - this would have been an occasion where I would have favored a split award.) Gradually, very gradually we see them get to know each other; and as they do, the visual layers separating them in the prison visiting room are peeled away. Yet, even after he has learned to accept Sister Helen as a human being (not without attempting to come on to her as if she were not a nun - director Tim Robbins's way of dispelling the notion that they might fall in love, as is so often the case in the more cliched versions of this type of story), Poncelet insists that his participation was limited to holding one of the victims down, but that it was his accomplice who raped and killed them both. And even days before his execution, he is still looking for "loopholes" in the bible, as Sister Helen admonishes him, seeing redemption as a free ticket into heaven instead of a means of owning up to his responsibility. ("I like that," he comments when she quotes Jesus's "the truth shall make you free." "So I pass that lie detector test, I'm home free.") Only in his final hour, he slowly, gradually gives up the protective layers of his bravado and lays bare his raw nerve and innermost anguish. And while he speaks, finally, in a complete flashback, we, the viewers, see what really happened that dark and lonely night in the woods, and what all the previous partial flashbacks have not revealed.

"It is easy to kill a monster, but hard to kill a human being," Poncelet's attorney once explains; and Tim Robbins echoes that sentiment on the commentary track. Yet, this movie is not about romanticizing a brutal killer, any more than it is about demonizing his victims. It is, first and foremost, an attempt to bring a complete perspective to one of contemporary America's most pressing problems, and to find a way past sorrow and hate and move towards the future. And even if you're still for the death penalty after having watched it - don't claim ignorance as to what is involved.

Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Movie With Stirring Performances
Review: Regardless of your stance on the death penalty, this remains a difficult movie to watch, and perhaps that's exactly what makes Dead Man Walking a great movie.

The movie centers around a nun named Sister Helen Prejean (played by Susan Sarandon) who befriends a convicted murderer and rapist named Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn) who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in the State of Louisiana. Poncelet first seeks Sister Helen's help in filing his appeal and obtaining legal representation. She is at his side through all the legal proceedings, and once Poncelet's chances for clemency are exhausted, she then helps him prepare for the execution by giving him spiritual guidance. Sister Helen must also try and allay the hurt and betrayal felt by the parents of the children that Poncelet was convicted of murdering.

This movie's greatest strength is the tremendous performances by Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Both were given Academy Award nominations for their roles, and Sarandon actually won the Oscar for Best Actress. I would have given this movie a 5 star rating, but I wasn't completely satisfied with the way in which the friendship between Sister Helen and Matthew Poncelet developed. In movies where two people from opposite walks of life come together for a given purpose, both usually walk away a little wiser and with a broader perspective. Sean Penn's character showed these changes, but Susan Sarandon's character was the same at the end of the movie as it was at the beginning. According to this movie, Sister Helen had learned nothing valuable or life-altering from her friendship with Matthew Poncelet.

When it first came out, this movie generated a great deal of public discussion about the death penalty. Those who support capital punishment believe that, in theory, there are certain crimes so heinous that those who commit them should be required to forfeit their life as restitution. This movie shows the huge difference between theory and reality. I think people might change their minds about capital punishment once they see that carrying out this theory requires strapping a guy onto a gurney, sticking a needle into his arm, and injecting him with lethal chemicals. I'll probably think about this movie for a long time to come, and it's entirely possible that it may sway my opinion on the death penalty.

Regardless of your stance on this controversial subject, this movie is guaranteed entertainment, and a definite must-see!