Film examines death row experiences

In his essay "Reflections on the Guillotine," Camus thoughtfully opined about the illogical nature of capital punishment as a criminal deterrent. Sartre, meanwhile, in his novel The Wall, elegantly exposed the thoughts and emotions of a condemned inmate in the hours before his execution.

In the new film Dead Man Walking, Tim Robbins does a little of both. And surprisingly, the sophomore director and high-profile Hollywood left-winger does so in a more even-handed fashion than your typical Parisian existentialist thinker.

Dead Man Walking, based on a book by the same name, tells the story of Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon), a nun who becomes the spiritual advisor to Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), an inmate facing death by lethal injection in a Louisiana state penitentiary for his part in the grisly rape and murder of two teenagers.

On the surface, it's a movie which seems susceptible to stereotypical character and plot pitfalls-- i.e., a saintly, cocksure nun befriends a gritty, unfairly sentenced inmate in his sentimental struggle for redemption.

But that's not the story of this film.

Robbins' screenplay doesn't stray far from the non-fiction book penned by the real-life Prejean, and his two stars are studies of real people, not pantomimes of cardboard characters. Sarandon's Sister Helen is a wide-eyed, first-time death row counselor who sometimes missteps her way across unnavigated territory. And Penn's Poncelet is a hard-hearted killer who, despite his protests to the contrary, is a by-product of justice, not a casualty of injustice.

Spiritual--not material-- redemption is at stake here. Sister Helen, who begins as Poncelet's pen pal and ends up his lone soulmate, aims to save a reprehensible man's soul, not clear an innocent man's name. Along the way, she gets an unexpected taste of the bitterness of his victims' families, and then, out of duty and a sincere desire for understanding, she goes back for more.

Robbins said the greatest challenge facing him in telling Prejean's story was to avoid romanticizing the condemned killer and, at the same time, give dignity to the families of Poncelet's victims.

That Robbins does manage to imbue the film with a stark and slow pulse sort of honesty is noteworthy in itself considering the character of his debut directing effort, Bob Roberts. That film, a proselytizing satire about American politicians, was a panorama of mediocrity and heavy-handedness. Robbins is no doubt a filmmaker with a political agenda, and he could have easily made similar mistakes in a movie inspired by the writings of an anti-capital punishment activist. But he doesn't. For the most part, Dead Man Walking does more showing than telling and more teaching than preaching. This not only gives the film artistic integrity, but also affords it more credibility as a cultural commentary. It's a smart move all around.

Speaking of smart moves, Penn surely made one by stepping back in front of the camera to take part in Dead Man Walking. As evidenced by his films The Indian Runner and The Crossing Guard, Penn has yet to find his muse as a writer/director. But he's long meandered about the cusp of greatness as a DeNiro-like character actor -- what he's always lacked is that one special, defining role. Now he just might have it.

Penn slithers into the role of a death row denizen with eerie ease. Physically, everything about him embodies what a Bayou Belt jailbird should be. The narrow and distrusting eyes. The thick pompadour and devilish goatee. The clipped southern accent and mumbled speech. But Penn's real coup is mirroring the killer's emotional side with chilling, understated effectiveness.

Poncelet is actually a composite character culled from two real-life death row inmates counseled by Prejean. One was remorseful and fearful, the other callous and emotionless. Penn melds both their personalities into Poncelet as coolly and effortlessly as he lights a cigarette. In his initial encounters with Sister Helen, Poncelet -- like an actor inside a cage trying to fit the image society has projected for him -- wears his good ol' southern boy racism and prison-insider machismo like a brassy badge. But as both his execution hour and his relationship with Sister Helen creep closer, human qualities begin to slowly seethe out from under Poncelet's hard shell. The story asks a lot from Penn, and he delivers with a casual confidence that's likely to net him a bevy gilded statuettes for his performance.

Sarandon, too, might do good to clear away a space in her trophy case. Her haggardly purposeful, puffy-eyed portrayal of Sister Helen is solid and sincere.

Prejean, who hails from an upper middle-class family but lives and works amidst underprivileged blacks in a New Orleans housing project, is an irrefutable do-gooder. Heck, she's a nun, and she does all the things nuns do (and don't do). But Sarandon infuses Sister Helen with streaks of rebellious individuality, tempered anger, heartfelt regret, and childlike mischievousness. As the audience's entree into the story -- and, more specifically, Poncelet's soul -- Sarandon provides calm, unfettered passage.

Without a doubt, the most powerful passages in Dead Man Walking are the one-on-one rap sessions between Poncelet and Sister Helen. The weakest links in the film's dramatic chain occur when the action moves outside the prison walls. Sister Helen's dialogue with the parents of Poncelet's victims -- though certainly necessary to the story's balance-- seems at times rehearsed and almost surreal. These scenes fortify the film's narrative and are essential in defining Sarandon's character, but they nonetheless detract from the texture of the big picture. Otherwise, very few instances in the film divulge Robbins' inexperience as a screenwriter and director.

Mostly what the film divulges is a lucid and minimally biased look at an issue historically shrouded by a haze of cultural and political divisiveness. The material is compelling, Robbins is well behaved, Sarandon is her usual professional self, and Penn is unforgettable. To boot, the soundtrack (featuring Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) is good enough to start a dead man walking to the nearest music store with cash in hand. All moral and political convictions aside, capital punishment never looked so good.