Starring: Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Bernie Mac, Miguel Nunez Jr., Anthony Anderson, Ned Beatty, R. Lee Ermey, Rick James, Clarence Williams III, Bokeem Woodbine
Life is an odd duck of a movie. It's a comedy to be sure, but it is also a sad story of two innocent men who spend the bulk of their adult lives imprisoned in Mississippi for a murder they didn't commit. There is a happy ending, but it occurs about twenty-five to thirty years too late. Maybe even forty years. It's as if the extra years were tacked on so we could see Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in heavy makeup as they approach ninety years old.
Even so, it is perhaps better that Life doesn't focus on how horrible it must be for two innocent men to serve an unjust life sentence. With two renowned comic actors like Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence as your leads, better to just let them wisecrack and bicker to take the edge off. Ray (Murphy) and Claude (Lawrence) argue and squabble from the first moment they meet in 1932 Harlem. Both wind up on the shit list of a ruthless club owner and are about to be killed when Ray proposes picking up moonshine in Mississippi as a way of making things right.
One thing leads to another in Mississippi, with Ray and Claude framed for the murder of a conman (Williams) by the local sheriff who actually committed the crime. Claude bemoans even being in this predicament, while Ray tries to think his way out of this mess. He finds he can't, and the years press on with prison life becoming a daily helping of backbreaking work under the baking Mississippi sun with the threat looming of being shot if you try to escape. Ray and Claude meet some characters, including Can't Get Right (Woodbine), a slow-functioning adult who can hit a baseball a mile. Ray and Claude try to arrange for Can't Get Right to be discovered by a Negro League scout and hope they would also be freed as Can't Get Right's "managers". It doesn't work out that way, which is a recurring theme as Ray and Claude attempt to free themselves of their situation.
As the years pass, various prisoners come and go while Ray and Claude are the constant. After their Can't Get Right plan fails, Ray and Claude don't speak for years. We wish they would start talking to each other again because they need the company, and that's when we know Life is working for us. Murphy and Lawrence smoothly switch gears when required. Life doesn't try to be too funny or too tragic. It's an adeptly balanced film. To reiterate my point in the opening paragraph, while it is nice that Ray and Claude are finally able to escape at long last, it is a shame they are in their nineties by now. How much freedom can they enjoy and how much time do they have to enjoy it? At least Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption had a pretty decent amount of years left to bask in the Mexican sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment