YMMV / Dead Man Walking

• Nightmare Fuel: The juxtaposition of Matthew and Carl's rape and murder of Walter and Hope with Matthew's execution via lethal injection.
• One-Scene Wonder: Clancy Brown as a cop who stops Helen for speeding and upon discovering she is a nun, notes that he once stopped an IRS agent and got an audit the next year before deciding not to risk similar wrath from God and simply letting her off with a warning. The scene wasn't in the script but happened to the real Helen Prejean during filming and she asked it to be included.
• Retroactive Recognition: The film has several:
  • The prison chaplain is played by Scott Wilson, who later went on to portray Hershel Greene in The Walking Dead.
  • One of Matthew's brothers is played by Jack Black in one of his more serious roles.
  • Peter Sarsgaard makes his film debut as Walter, one of Matt's victims.
• Squick: Hope's mother's line about the coroner's report, "Her vagina was all torn up." It's not hard to imagine what that poor girl endured before she died—before we ourselves see it in a flashback.
• Tearjerker: Matthew breaking down as he's lead to the death chamber, quietly asking Helen to check in on his mother occasionally, and sincerely apologizing to the victims' parents for taking their children away from them.
  • In the flashback, Walter being Forced to Watch as Matthew and Carl take turns raping Hope, futilely screaming for them to leave her alone, before being shot in the back of the head.
  • The fact that prior to her death, Hope had just graduated from high school and planned on joining the Air Force.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Despite his change of heart at the end of the film, Matthew Poncelet is still a killer who raped and murdered two innocent teenagers. According to Sister Helen, this was not the first time he and Carl harassed a teenage couple either. The fact that he spends most of film lying through his teeth and claiming that his partner Carl is the one who did everything (conveniently forgetting that legally and morally, this still makes him guilty of Murder by Inaction) before finally admitting that he was a full participant doesn't help.

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