NUTS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Courtroom drama asks the searching question: should a downtrodden and wronged woman have to face the inevitable consequences of acting like a complete jerk? Martin Ritt has made cogent films for great causes but if there is a great cause here somewhere, someone will have to point it out to me. Rating: 0.
Claudia Draper (played by Barbra Streisand) is fighting for her chance to be tried for manslaughter. She believes herself to be competent to stand trial but two court-appointed psychiatrists disagree. They think that she is mentally unbalanced and when she breaks her attorney's nose in the court of law, the judge is inclined to agree with the psychiatrists. The court appoints Aaron Levinsky (played by Richard Dreyfuss) to defend Draper when her first attorney--the one with the broken nose--chooses for some reason to withdraw from the case. Levinsky also finds that it is tough to deal with a woman who carries on her shoulder a chip the size of the Grand Cooley Dam. Levinsky must prove at the pre-trial hearing that this ravening, enraged animal who is as likely to break his jaw as confer with him is actually a rational and mentally competent human.
NUTS was produced by Streisand herself. She packed the film with more familiar stars than the film really needed. Besides herself and Dreyfuss, the film also features Maureen Stapleton, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach, Robert Webber, James Whitmore, and Leslie Neilsen. Ritt does his best to give each a chance to act, but the film is too short to do that effectively. But if Streisand's character has appeal in NUTS it is because we remember Streisand from other roles. Though at the end of NUTS we may have some idea, albeit trite, of what went wrong in Claudia Draper's life, we still don't know if she is crazy or stupid--it has to be one or the other.
What is disappointing about NUTS is that after almost two hours of film I am not sure what this film was trying to say. Director Martin Ritt's previous films have been really clear and cogent arguments. His films include EDGE OF THE CITY, HUD, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, SOUNDER, CONRACK, THE FRONT, and NORMA RAE. Most of those films have had something to say and they said it. NUTS seems to be trying to say something, but I have no idea what it is. I cannot associate Claudia Draper with any cause I can put a name to other than the right to act stupidly and then escape the consequences. On the other hand, Eli Wallach plays one of the villains of the piece. The audience certainly seemed to think he was a villain. I can think of nothing he did wrong but oppose the sympathetic lead. Other Ritt films have been manipulative, but at least they have been so in good cause. NUTS is manipulative (and no place so obviously as in the postscript to this fiction film), but not for any cause. Rate it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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