October 12, 2001

TV WEEKEND - 'Shot in the Heart': Why, Big Brother, Why?

By JULIE SALAMON

Since the Supreme Court voted to reinstate capital punishment in 1976, more than 730 people have been executed in the United States. While some opponents of the death penalty work steadily for its repeal, the executions have become part of life. They are grimly applauded by many people and numbly ignored by others who object � but not enough to take action or even pay much attention.

In 1977, however, a state-ordered killing riveted the nation. The death sentence of Gary Mark Gilmore, the first man to be executed in the United States in a decade, was major news, and Gilmore was a glamorous subject. He was sexy, intelligent and eager to receive retribution for murdering two men. Civil libertarians begged him to appeal his death sentence, but he had no interest in being part of a larger cause. Having spent 22 of his 36 years in prison, he was ready to die.

 Gilmore gained mythological status in 1979 with the publication of "The Executioner's Song," Norman Mailer's brilliant anthropological vision of the case. Billed as a "true life" novel, the book sprawled across an enormous landscape, whose imagery encompassed a larger-than- life outlaw, his wild romance with a young woman named Nicole, a media circus and the vastness and divergence of America itself. This huge, vibrant work, which won a Pulitzer Prize, made a legend of Gary Gilmore.

 But it took the outlaw's mild younger brother to bring a stark humanity to Gary Gilmore's story. Mikal Gilmore went to college and became a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. He wasn't interested so much in what Gary meant to America but in how their family had come to produce him. Yet it took Mikal Gilmore years after the execution to feel strong enough to conduct his personal investigation. Finally, in 1994, 17 years after his brother's death, he published a brave, sorrowful memoir titled "Shot in the Heart."

 Now his book has been made into a bleak, haunting HBO movie. This dramatic interpretation of "Shot in the Heart" takes place almost entirely during the days before Gary Gilmore's execution, interrupted by flashbacks to the family's past. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union has persuaded Mikal and another brother, Frank Jr., to come to Utah's Draper Prison to convince Gary to appeal his execution.

 The brothers have all been alienated for years and suspicious of one another. They are conducting this wary reunion in the most hostile circumstances imaginable � meeting inside a prison, surrounded by guards while outside lurk strangers with an interest in the outcome of their meeting. The A.C.L.U. lawyer is defending a principle that requires Gary to live. A journalistic entrepreneur named Larry Schiller has bought the rights to Gary's story, which is much more valuable if he dies.

 Mikal approaches Gary with a confused desire for absolution and brotherly love. Having gone a respectable route, Mikal wants nothing more than to distance himself from the brother who has committed evil acts. But as the runt of the Gilmore litter � much younger than his three brothers � he desperately wants to reconcile with Gary. Mikal suffers guilt by association in every direction. He's the brother of a killer, yes, but he's also the favored son of the father whose cruelty may have instigated Gary's criminal behavior.

 The director, Agnieszka Holland, and the screenwriter, Frank Pugliese, have created a scenario that unflinchingly captures the feverish and desperate intensity of Mikal's quest. Much of the film takes place in prison, and these confined scenes have the naked intimacy of a play. Mr. Mailer's "Executioner's Song" reflected the storm around Gilmore; "Shot in the Heart" rests firmly in the quiet dread of the eye.

 The casting is eerily right. Giovanni Ribisi, a slight, cherub-faced man, perfectly conveys Mikal's rawness and defensiveness. His eyes are red, as though he's just recovered from a crying jag � and you have the impression the jag has gone on for years. In flashbacks he appears like a little doll, cuddled by the same father who routinely whacked his older brothers. As an adult, he retains the same bewilderment he revealed as a child, not comprehending why he's treated so differently from the brothers he adores.

 Mikal is still enthralled by Gary, and it's easy to see why. The older brother carries himself like a prince. Even in prison he has style, outfitted in all-white, showing off the red and blue shoelaces he filched from someone. Even in his disgrace, Gary seems sure and strangely noble, willing to accept punishment for his crimes, arranging book deals to leave money behind for his loved ones. But he's also cold as death. When Mikal asks him why he killed men he didn't know, Gary says matter-of-factly, "It seemed appropriate." Elias Koteas, who plays Gary, bears a strong physical resemblance to the real Gilmore. His studied swaggering charm and flashes of madness and tenderness suggest that the actor has spent more than a few hours studying Robert De Niro films.

 The film makes it clear that the Gilmore brothers weren't part of just another dysfunctional family but a repository of superstition, mistrust and oddness that goes back generations. Their father (Sam Shepard), seen only in flashbacks, was a cruel man with a soft spot for MiKal and apparent disdain for everyone else. Bessie, the mother (Amy Madigan), came from a Mormon family steeped in notions of portent and divine retribution. Mikal hasn't had to separate from his family; he's had to escape. Ms. Holland visually reinforces Mikal's despairing sense of smallness and loneliness, emphasizing the large Western spaces surrounding the Utah prison where he meets with Gary. Harsh mountains loom in an endless sky. It's hard to find your place in a place like that.

 In this harrowing story redemption comes hard � if it comes at all. For Gary Gilmore, living, not dying, was the punishment he couldn't bear. "I don't want to die," he says. "I just want to be free."