Everybody Wins

Sometimes movies work for a whole variety of reasons. It might simply be because there is a great director at the helm but then even great directors make bummers now and then. Sometimes the story is just so damned good it hardly matters who the director is and sometimes a movie works because one or more of the cast carries it. "Everybody Wins" works because it's got a fine director working at the top of his form, (Karl Reisz), a terrific original screenplay by the playwright Arthur Miller and probably career-best performances from leads Nick Nolte and Debra Winger.

Nolte is the celebrity investigator hired by a flaky 'do-gooder' to prove the innocence of a teenage boy she knows on a charge of murder. From the outset, you know this isn't going to be a conventional 'thriller'. You know instantly that Winger's character of the supposed 'do-gooder' is, shall we say, a little on the strange side; that her come-on to Nolte is so quick she may even be a nymphomaniac and that Nolte's investigation is going off in directions that conventional thrillers don't. You also know that Arthur Miller doesn't do 'conventional'.

Of course, the talent on the screen didn't translate into a commercial success. Even the critics, with the exception of Pauline Kael, who loved the film, were stand-offish. Here was a crime movie that no-one could understand or know what to make of but in its off-the-wall way it was trail-blazingly original and I still think it's one of the truly great American films of its decade. If you don't know it, seek it out and give yourself over to its sublime strangeness.

I can see why this film was not a success at the box-office. For a thriller, it is far too talky and at times the plot unfolds purely through scenes of conversational exposition. There are no chases, no shootouts, and only the briefest of sex scenes and courtroom sequences. The reason is because the film is concerned solely with character. Even the film's supposed theme, that of corruption infecting everybody (even down to O'Toole's teacher sister), is only half-heartedly dealt with. There has been speculation that the play upon which the screenplay is based was inspired by Arthur Miller's relationship with Marilyn Monroe and this is an interesting consideration. Angela is a frustrating character although not without charm. O'Toole certainly falls for her in a big way and I suspect that might be the reason this got termed a film noir. Sometimes you wonder just how much effort the critics put in. Yes, a cursory scan of the plot would reveal the elements of a noir: private investigator, mysterious seductress, murder, corruption - but watching the film it feels less like a noir and more like one of those small town dramas, like Gene Hackman made in the 1980s, such as TWICE IN A LIFETIME or FULL MOON IN BLUE WATER. And the gang of church-building bikers, led by cinema's favourite fruitcakes Patton and Wilhoite, seems to have wandered in from an entirely different movie. That said a script by Miller will undoubtedly give up some fantastic dialogue, which is definitely the case here. You can tell the guy's pedigree as even some of the throwaway lines are beautifully written.

No, I didn't really expect much of this. It was given to me by someone who went by what actors was in it, and who does(or did at the time) realize the talent of Nolte. I'm not sure I've heard anything about this, one way or the other. For any other Danes out there, in our tongue, this goes by a title that translates to Innocently Convicted. I tried to give this a chance, I really did. I watched, I paid attention, at least a lot of the way. This begins with an opening sequence that mainly brings to mind the word 'awkward'(and sadly, that's not the last time during the film), and we soon follow ol' Nick investigating a case... uh... sort of. Unfortunately, for both him and the audience(in fact, us in particular... he's a highly paid Hollow-, sorry, *Hollywood*, however did I mix those two up... anyway, actor, and the part he's playing is a fictional character, his pain ends the moment his likeness disappears from the television), every single person that he meets(not the ones he already knew) that has anything, at all, to do with the case is among the all-time weirdest people in the history of human beings. Editing and cinematography are undistinguished and more camera angles would have done wonders. Writing varies. Story-telling is standard. Little in this is effective. At the end of it, you're still not sure what really happened, or what was true and what not. I can basically accept that, if the film built a mood or did something otherwise worthwhile, anything at all, really, except to just create confusion(in the end never relieved) and curiosity as to what the answers are. At least it's not much longer than 90 minutes. I recommend this to mystery fans who are fine with not knowing... and who don't mind something essentially devoid of atmosphere. 5/10

Everybody I know say that this is a horrible movie.I can´t understand why.Good story,good acting by Nick Nolte and Debra Winger.OK it is not a masterpiece exactly but you can watch the whole movie and afterwards think about it for 1 hour or so.

Modern noir, written by Arthur Miller, drowns in pretensions while pretending to be a murder mystery; the only mystery is how this murky, congested screenplay attracted stars Nick Nolte and Debra Winger (both treading water). After a New England doctor is murdered and a young suspect is named, a schizophrenic local woman, who believes the boy is innocent, hires an investigator from out-of-town to ferret out the facts. Winger's performance is like a high-wire act: she's fruity, irrational, always teetering on total collapse. Perhaps with handling that was more restrictive and writing that had more focus, this unbalanced character might have generated audience empathy (or at least made some sense). As it is, she's the wobbly centerpiece of an already-shaky melodrama, one that eventually crumbles around the actors like a house of cards. NO STARS from ****