Nothing To Lose (1997) * * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: What a surprise: a big-name Hollywood comedy that's actually funny. Tim Robbins and Martin Lawrence both score points (although Robbins comes out slightly ahead).
The opening scenes of NOTHING TO LOSE hit me like a left hook when I was expecting a body blow. Tim Robbins, playing a corporate hustler named Nick Beam, is in bed with his wife, murmuring in a dead, empty voice about how the love is gone. Then we get a surprise -- several, actually -- that had both me and the rest of the audience falling out of our seats. This sets us up on several levels: not only is Robbins a good actor, but so is the Beam character.
Nick works for an advertising company which fills his hours, but he still manages to find time for his wife. One afternoon, he gets out of a whole slew of corporate obligations and comes home early... to find his wife and his boss in bed together. He wanders downstairs, dazed, and then does what no man in a blue funk should ever do: get in his car.
His aimless driving leads him to a carjacking, courtesy of a fellow named T. Paul (Martin Lawrence), who senses Mr. Whitebread ain't firing on all thrusters when he doesn't even look at the gun pointing at his temple. "Boy, did you ever pick the wrong guy on the wrong day," Beam mutters with a deadly little smile, and floors it.
One scarifying ride later, the two of them take stock in a diner far outside the city. They don't like each other, but they're forced to rely on each other when the Land Rover runs out of gas and Paul sticks up a gas station to fill it up. Bit by bit, Beam's story comes out... along with a bizarre plan to get revenge on his boss by robbing him blind.
The movie's a pastiche of recent comedy cliches, and there's no point in ignoring it. What's different is that the movie is funny. Most comedies that try to play this kind of mix-and-match don't work; they strike the wrong notes, or make the heroes into idiots. Both Beam and Paul know what's what, which makes them interesting to watch: you wonder what they're going to do next. In one scene, they rob a sporting-goods store, and what could have been a routine stick-em-up turns into a heated competition over who had the more intimidating stickup style.
Martin Lawrence is an odd duck. I can't figure out if I like him or hate him, but I liked him in this movie: he does things with his voice and face that shouldn't be physically possible, which is half the reason for the laughs he gets. The other half is his timing and attitude: pay attention to the scene where he dresses down Beam for not having a tighter grip on his wife (and Beam's reaction, too). Or the scene where he tries to tell Beam he's in danger, and gets shrugged off.
Ultimately, the cliches win in NOTHING TO LOSE, but that doesn't mean the ride isn't enjoyable. My basic rule of thumb for comedy is: Did I laugh? Yeah -- a lot more than I probably should have, but I can't say that about most movies. And the scene with the security guard Goth-dancing in the laser vault has to be seen to be believed.
syegul@cablehouse.dyn.ml.org
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews