Chacun sa chance

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 rented this movie with my wife via Digital Cable because the teaser sounded interesting and we honestly hadn't heard anything about it. After watching it, I understand why. This movie is pointless and stupid. I knew as soon as it opened that we were in trouble. The scene the opening credits and the music all look like the belong in three different films. I couldn't say enough bad things about this movie.

The Chemistry between Winger and Nolte is very dry. If you need a lot of blood, gun play and explosions then this movie is not for you. It unfolds in a tortured manner which I happen to enjoy. The people of this small town are not flashy or larger than life, They are ordinary and have settled into a predictable pattern. The importance of each character is presented to us in an unpredictable sequence which tends to keep the audience off balance and somewhat unsettled. Most of the interplay is understated- another feature which, in an era of grandiosity, is refreshing. If the viewer has the patience to allow the story to unfold the reward will be well worth the investment of time.

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 ****

Oh, my goodness, this was quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. At the end of the film, I found myself asking what the point of the whole thing was, and yet I couldn't come up with an answer. This movie has almost NO plot. The fact that it was filmed in my hometown couldn't even save it. Not that Nolte nor Winger did a bad job, but I definitely would not recommend this film to anyone who may be on the edge of whether to watch it or not... You'll find yourself, at the end, saying "Whatever..."