Everyone involved in "Shot in the Heart" wants to make one thing perfectly clear — even though this HBO movie is about Gary Gilmore and his family, it's not about execution or the death penalty.
Based on the book by Mikal Gilmore (Gary's youngest brother), "Shot in the Heart" (Saturday, 10 p.m., HBO) chronicles Mikal's attempts to stop Gary's 1977 execution at the Utah State Prison. Sentenced for killing two young men, Gilmore's execution was a media sensation — the first after the U.S. Supreme Court ended a 10-year moratorium.
"Shot" is the story of Mikal Gilmore's (Giovanni Ribisi) attempts to come to terms not only with the execution of his brother, Gary (Elias Koteas), but with his family's legacy of violence. It recounts Mikal's attempts to talk Gary into appealing his sentence and his eventual acceptance of his brother's fate.
"For me, it's a story about how families' histories and relationships resulted in more than one form of death penalties," Mikal Gilmore told TV critics. "I think I came out of this whole experience wondering how much of my family I wanted to carry forward. I don't think I ever really resolved that question. I don't have children, and I don't think I ever will."
(And neither, as it turns out, did any of his three brothers — two of whom are dead.)
"Shot" doesn't attempt to excuse Gary Gilmore's behavior, but it does attempt to explain it. Flashbacks show his father, Frank Gilmore Sr. (Sam Shepard), abusing his three oldest sons, abandoning infant Gary on a park bench, getting hauled off to jail. Various family secrets are revealed, including one about the actual father of one of the Gilmore brothers.
"When I read the book . . . I was devastated by the honesty and the courage of Mikal to write so honestly about not just his search for his brother but really the search for his family," said producer Tom Fontana. "And the search for the roots of love and violence that exist in every American family. So for me, it was less about, 'Let's do a movie about the execution of Gary Gilmore' than it really was a movie about this family over generations and how the sins and the successes of every generation play a part in the next generations."
"The focus of this film is not about the execution of Gary Gilmore," said director Agnieszka Holland. "It really is about a young man's journey and discovery of his own family."
Local viewers, of course, will be interested in the local angles. Although it was shot mostly in Baltimore, the cast and crew did travel to Salt Lake City to film exteriors.
There are scenes in which local sites are clearly visible, including one with Mikal and his brother, Frank Jr., in front of the Salt Lake Temple and the Brigham Young statue. And Frank makes a crude comment about the statue.
There are multiple references to Mormons, the majority unflattering. If this is the only impression viewers get of the LDS Church, they're going to get some strange ideas. Gary and Mikal's mother, Bessie (Amy Madigan), is, well, rather odd — she's convinced that she and her sisters conjured up a ghost when they were kids and that ghost continued to wreak vengeance against various members of the family for years.
Another scene shows what Bessie believes is one of the three Nephites, who saves them when they're abandoned by Frank Sr. And there's a weird scene in which "Mormon Danites" execute a man in 1857, bringing up blood atonement as related to Gilmore's desire to die by firing squad.
"I think that, especially in Mikal's book, this link to the mythology of the Mormon roots in the family is greatly important," Holland said. "But, of course, I think it's a universal, human story. And it's only secondary aspect to me that I had to explore a bit of the Mormon religion, some kind of past."
Some kind of weird past.
"Shot in the Heart" is nothing if not intense — you can feel Mikal's struggle. As a religious primer, it fails. But as a family drama, it succeeds.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com