TV REVIEWS : Directing Pales Next to Acting in ‘Light’

The anti-death penalty drama “Last Light” (premiering on Showtime Sunday at 9 p.m.) is notable for Kiefer Sutherland’s condemned killer and for the movie’s unpreachy, understated stance against capital punishment.

Co-starring Forest Whitaker as a troubled Death Row guard who comes to befriend Sutherland’s snarly sociopath, the production also marks the competent directorial debut of Sutherland (which follows Whitaker’s own directorial debut in an HBO movie tonight, see below).

Once past the rudimentary setups--repetitive shots panning the exterior of Soledad Prison and clunky, alternating domestic scenes between Whitaker and his suburban wife and son--what’s surprising is the dimensional performance director Sutherland manages to wring from himself. It is arguably the young actor’s most vivid portrayal.

Essentially, Sutherland’s acting deceptively draws you into his violent, charismatic character at the same time that Whitaker’s malcontent guard subtly begins to warm up to him.

Despite the picture’s flat moments and its predictability,Whitaker and Sutherland (in a teleplay by writer Robert Eisele) create a sense of anticipation and a prisoner-guard chemistry underscored by its unspoken rapport rather than histrionics.

As a man who’s been incarcerated since the age of 14 and whose unseen murder victims were either other inmates or guards, Sutherland’s fictional outsider is much easier to empathize with than, say, Ted Bundy. But the details of life in the “hole”--complete with Sutherland’s feces-smeared body in a scene that shockingly opens the movie--and the concluding trip to the electric chair is subliminally designed to encourage neutral viewers and proponents of capital punishment to think twice about our justice system.

His head shaved, his face swathed in a thick black rubber mask, his body tensing up with consecutive jolts from the pull of the switch, Sutherland’s pageant of death reminds you of some dark, medieval ceremony.

It’s a different kind of statement than James Cagney screaming his way to the chair in the memorable “Angels With Dirty Faces” (1938). Closer to home, it’s almost as wrenching as Bruce Davison getting zapped in last year’s comparatively unheralded but raw, cinema verite, Fox TV execution movie, “Live! From Death Row,” which carried death by the state one step further by having smoke curl up from the executed man’s head.

“I guess they want to show they got the power,” Sutherland’s resigned figure remarks after being informed that clemency has been denied.

In a postscript following the end credits, these numbers roll across the screen: “2,676 inmates are on Death Row in the U.S. today. One hundred ninety-one Death Row inmates were executed between 1983-1993.”