Execution of Justice

Tim Daly is surprisingly adept at playing tortured, ruined ex-City Supervisor Dan White who, in November 1978, shot and killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and fellow supervisor Harvey Milk in their offices. Daly, who also executive produced for Showtime, is careful not to build an apologia for White; instead, he allows us to see the pressures which erupted and quickly boiled over in White's conflicted life, with money woes hindering him, real or imagined betrayals haunting him, and the fear of failure chipping away at his hard-working-American exterior. I didn't care for the roller-skating voice of Gay Truth who makes several appearances, and the courtroom scenes are a bit lax, but the film's docu-drama approach is absorbing and commendable, and the teleplay fills in a lot of gaps surrounding this case which are not otherwise well-known.