The Executioner's Song (1982)

What seems to circulating in rental is the 135 minute 2008 Director's Cut release. Despite statements elsewhere to the contrary, it does NOT contain the significant full-frontal work by then-23-year-old Rosanna Arquette that appeared in the European release. Rather, verbal obscenities and explicit violence form the minor amount of incremental content.

A true-crime sleeper that provokes much contemplation in the more intellectual viewer. Norman Mailer's 1979 best-seller novel earned a Pulitzer plus a screenplay Emmy nod, Rosanna Arquette earned a Emmy nod and Tommy Lee Jones took home an Emmy for this portrayal of murderer Gary Gilmore, who demanded his own execution and so marked the turning away of the American legal system from capital punishment as cruel and unusual.

Gilmore arrives in Utah paroled into the custody of his cousin (Lathi). Institutionalized by juvenile detention and adult incarceration, he is unable to adapt to freedom's smallest challenges.

He finds his angel in Arquette, who's also been unable to pull herself above the sorriest station in society and/or her lifetime of miseries. Together they form a dysfunctional life raft on the mere fact each now has someone that doesn't entirely victimize them.

Unable to cope, Gilmore quickly turns back to his life of petty crime. When convicted of murder, Gilmore's suddenly at the center of the battle for/against capital punishment and associated media sensationalism. Jones and Arquette, on the foundation of Mailer's meticulous research, develop ever-richer and more complex characterizations as the film progresses.

The duo are pathetic yet admirable, hopelessly adrift yet standing tall as true individualists, deserving of their due yet clearly were entitled to a better chance at some decent life ? rather than the life the world had imposed upon them.

RECOMMENDATION: Ignoring any issue that the film lionizes a killer, the film's recommended on the basis of its factual storyline, rich characters and solid acting.