CLEMENCY – Review

CLEMENCY opens in St. Louis January 31st exclusively at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Theater

Examining the effects of capital punishment from the eyes of a prison warden may have seemed like a novel idea, but the new anti-death penalty drama CLEMENCY completely fails in its execution. CLEMENCY opens with prison Warden Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) presiding over the 12th execution under her watch. A medical tech has trouble finding the prisoner’s vein for the lethal injection, so the poor guy flops around for a few seconds and gargles unpleasantly before expiring (no mention is made of what the last moments of his victim’s life were like). A panicked Warden Bernadine races to close the curtain between the killer and his family who are witnessing the execution. The rest of the story revolves Bernadine’s concerns about another upcoming execution, that of Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge), a convicted cop-killer whose upcomng fate stresses out the Warden.

A press release claims director Chinonye Chukwu spent four years researching death row inmates and convictions in Ohio in preparation for her script for CLEMENCY. I don’t know what Ms Chukwu did for four years, but I learned nothing about capital punishment or execution procedures watching this film that I didn’t know from watching better films such as DEAD MAN WALKING or THE GREEN MILE. CLEMENCY is simply an agenda-driven anti-death penalty screed. If you’re already against capital punishment, the film preaches to the choir, but if you’re for it, this movie is not only too incompetent and poorly presented to change minds, it barely tries.  The script even contradicts itself concerning the cop-killer’s innocence. In an early scene, he bangs his head against his prison cell wall, splashing it with blood, and cries “Just kill me now, I did what I done”. Near the end, when he’s strapped to the gurney, he turns to his victim’s parents and tearfully asserts his innocence. The incompetent script seems determined to put the halo of innocence on Woods’ head without evidence or reason or ever addressing his crimes. He was convicted by a jury of killing a police officer yet none of the evidence the jurors were shown, damning or exculpatory, is even discussed. This is not a story, like last month’s JUST MERCY, of someone railroaded for a crime they didn’t commit. No reason is given why the Governor should grant clemency at all. Woods’ defense attorney (Richard Schiff) mumbles something unspecific about his innocence, but don’t they all?  He holds his Woods’ hand, telling him he’s “not alone” and how unfair it is that he can’t see the son he fathered with a high school girl just before he killed the cop. The son of the murdered cop is never shown having his hand held.

Alfre Woodard has received a lot of praise for her performance here, but I was unimpressed. The burden of being the Warden of a prison with a death row clearly is taking its toll on this woman. She stares off into space, can’t sleep, drinks straight bourbon in a bar (often alone), and can no longer connect with her husband. Why does she hold this position she is clearly unfit for? Why doesn’t she transfer to a prison that does not have a death row (the vast majority of prisons, even in death penalty states, do not)? Why does it take 12 executions for her to get to this place mentally? None of these questions are addressed. Instead the script gives her repetitive speeches about the ‘dignity’ of those on death row. Woodard delivers every line in the same terse, halting half-whisper that you see on lame TV dramas and she almost never changes her expression. There’s a long wordless shot that holds on a close-up of Woodard’s face for several minutes after a dramatic moment. Her eyes slowly bug out and snot flows out of her nostrils. I’m not sure the purpose of this shot. I guess it’s somehow supposed to show Warden Bernadine as some kind of badass but to me it just made her seem weak and a bit deranged. Woodard can be a capable actress (she has an Oscar nom under her belt), so perhaps she was so confident in her abilities that she chose to give a kind of quiet and unflashy performance here. Or maybe she was directed that way, but this approach leaves a vacuum to be filled and there’s nobody else on screen to do so. Everyone acts in this same lifeless manner. CLEMENCY has zero energy and it’s deadly dull. We get endless domestic navel-gazing soap-opera between Bernadine and her English teacher husband (Wendell Pierce) with plenty of amateurish dialog (delivered with slow dramatic pauses). Some cringe-worthy examples: “I don’t know how it’s going to work. Living an empty shell of a life”, “I don’t think you want to be living in fragments. I think you want to be whole” and “You can’t save the world”. The symbolism in CLEMENCY is shallow and unbearable. The cop-killer’s cell wall is decorated with his artwork of birds (get it? He envies their freedom!) and Bernadine’s husband happens to be teaching his students Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, the famous 1952 book about black identity. It’s early, but I hope I don’t have to sit through a film worse than CLEMENCY this year.

0 of 4 Stars