Karel Reisz (1990)
What turned out to be Karel Reisz’s final feature is based on one of Arthur Miller’s very few original screenplays. In spite of this pedigree and Pauline Kael’s admiring New Yorker review (one of her last), it’s a poor film. The first meeting of the two principals is promising. Angela Crispini (Debra Winger) wants Tom O’Toole (Nick Nolte), an ex-cop turned private detective, to look into a murder which, she says, resulted in a miscarriage of justice – she insists she has proof of this. The words Angela uses in her opening conversations with O’Toole suggest that she’s in awe of his integrity and passion for justice (she’s seen him on television although I didn’t understand why a man in O’Toole’s line of work would be a celebrity). The look in her face and the tone of the voice, however, make clear that she wants to seduce him, and she quickly succeeds. Debra Winger’s bounteous vivacity and Nick Nolte’s rugged wit make these early exchanges enjoyable. But once the minor characters are introduced and Angela’s reluctance to impart the clinching evidence she claims to have has become a main element of the story, it’s increasingly obvious where Everybody Wins is going – and I couldn’t see that Reisz and Miller meant this to be obvious. As an elderly judge, Jack Warden is vivid and funny but it’s clear this old man will turn out to be shrewdly self-interested. It seems to take ages (even though the film runs only ninety-seven minutes) to expose the various hypocrisies at work – and the limits to the characters’ willingness to tell the whole truth – in the New England city where the story is set.
As might be expected, Miller’s script is wordy and the words are sometimes too fancy. There’s one monologue in particular that Debra Winger speaks which, although the actress delivers it with aplomb, doesn’t belong in the mouth of Angela, an ex-hooker who’s bright but not highly educated. Winger is less varied when Angela is mournful, which she’s required to be for quite a stretch. Nolte, partly because Tom O’Toole really does have integrity (but also knows when he’s beaten), eventually gives the more satisfying performance. Karel Reisz keeps changing the mood as if to remind himself that Everybody Wins is meant to be, at some level, a mystery thriller: Mark Isham’s score gamely keeps up with these shifts but, in doing so, exposes the lack of a coherent tone. It’s the three songs on the soundtrack sung by Leon Redbone – ‘Seduced’, ‘Polly Wolly Doodle’ and ‘A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’ – which tell the story and illustrate the eventual triumph of self-interest. Some of the editing looks shaky in the latter stages. The cast also includes Will Patton, Judith Ivey, Kathleen Wilhoite and Frank Military, who’s good as the young man wrongly in jail.
18 April 2014
