FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved
| Film by FFWD Staff Life If I am sent to a federal penitentiary in the next little while I am going to kick that experience up a notch and use what I have learned from movies. Prison life, according to films such as Stir Crazy with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, and the latest maximum security romp, Life, with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, is just a place to meet new friends, fight The Man and plan escapes. In Life, Ray and Claude (Murphy and Lawrence) are supposed opposites living in New York, 1948. They go to clubs, they gamble, they dress sharply and both have some dabblings with the local black mob. What sets them apart is that Murphy is a pickpocket and Lawrence is starting work at a bank. Very quickly they are thrown together when they are both caught seemingly ripping off the mob. To make it up, they have to go to Mississippi for a moonshine run. It is here in hick country that their high falutin’ New Yawk ways don’t help none, and they end up being framed for murder and given a life sentence for their troubles. Their hard time is spent digging ditches and breaking big rocks into little rocks and arguing between themselves about whose fault it is that they are there in the first place. The other prisoners came from ACME Rent-a-Prisoner. "You need a giant sized tough guy with the heart of a cream puff? We got ’im. How ’bout a gay wannabe nightclub singer? Hell, we’ll even throw in a wise old-timer if you take the handicapped yet gifted kid." In Life it is one damn thing after another. Sometimes there are moments of originality and character, like Ray’s infectious dream of owning a nightclub, or the Mississippi "coloured" barroom scene, but most of the time they build up some smug, contrived occurrence that just flies by like scenery out a bus window. The problem is that within the hills and valleys of 50 years in prison we learn very little about the two inmates we are following. Ray is a wise-cracking city slicker who genuinely likes people. Claude is a selfish jerk who blames Ray for his problems. Other than that, their time is spent insulting and goading each other. While some of the insults are pretty funny, they don’t make up for the fact that we don’t care. The whole film seems to be thrown together based on the premise of Murphy and Lawrence doing time together. Ted Demme doesn’t exactly direct the whole thing out of that mire and Murphy seems content to be himself. Maybe the only good thing to come out of this is that other filmmakers in Hollywood will be scared straight once they see the box-office receipts for such weak characters. |
| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |